Simple yet extremely important rules when designing and creating any content for virtual reality which should yield in high immersive experiences. Workflow setups between multiple modelling tools and substance painter using PBR materials exporting into game engine Unity 3D.

1. Best practices
in virtual reality

2. Jaroslav Stehlík
Lead programmer
DIVR Labs
@jaroslavstehlik

3. Divr Labs
First Czech VR game company
Working on a sci-fi horror shooter Blue Effect
for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Playstation VR
http://divrlabs.com

4. Virtual Reality?
So, what is the virtual reality?

5. What was Virtual Reality?
early 1991
slow/huge hardware
expensive components
people were more
interested in the
internet

6. What is Virtual Reality?
2012
Oculus reinvented VR
Valve invented
absolute positional
tracking
Now every hardware
manufacturer has it's
own Head-mounted
display

7. Perception of reality
Why does the brain think that
something is real?

8. Perception of reality
Depth perception
Stereoscopic vision works only
in short range distances and
not everyone sees in stereo.
Actual head movements give
us much more information than
stereo vision.

9. Perception of reality
Measure
People do compare everything
to everything.
Scale matters a lot in VR.
If something is off, the
perceived reality often breaks.

10. Perception of reality
Textures
Every surface has
microstructures "texture" which
our brain is possessed with.
Without detailed texture, there
is almost no perception of
depth and motion as well.

11. Immersion
What drives immersion and what breaks it?

12. What drives immersion
emotions
memorable moments
physical world
gameplay
graphics
sound

13. Designed immersion
Design
If everything in the virtual
space has it's clear purpose
and is fully interactive, people
get easily immersed by every
item, tool placed in your virtual
world.

14. Motion sickness
What causes motion sickness?

15. Motion sickness
It is not clear how many people
suffers from motion sickness
but from reported cases, it is
clear that it is not a minor
problem.
Most people get sick when their
body starts moving without
perceiving actual physical
movement.

16. Motion sickness
Velocity changes
Twist and rotation
Moving ground or large part of the world
This discomfort can leave a really bad experience
Does not affect everyone the same
What is safe: constant linear movement or teleportation :-/

17. Graphics
How to prepare graphical assets for VR?

18. Graphical assets
How to prepare cool 3d assets?
Keep your units straight! 1m in 3D editor = 1m in 3D engine!
Always prepare assets for PBR "Physically based shading"
Constantly check your assets in VR!
Even, if you model by blueprints it is highly probable that
you will make a mistake which can be noticeable in VR.

19. Scanning assets
Most realistic assets are
scanned physical objects.
They have proper shape, size,
material properties and because
they are real, they have some
purpose in our physical world.
https://megascans.se

20. Optimise assets!
Your assets are rendered in stereo. That is min. 2x per frame.
The best looking VR games do render twice the native resolution!
The game has to run always smooth 90 FPS - that is 11ms per frame!
Keep your polycount minimal as possible!
Reuse materials and textures as possible, use texture atlases.

21. PBR Physical materials
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-practice

24. PBR Physical materials
At DIVR Labs we use Substance
Painter. It is not about the
software but about the result.
Keep your albedo / metalness /
roughness near physical values

25. PBR Physical materials
Be extremely careful with normal
maps in VR.
They tend to create shimmer
artefacts which can be perceived
as aliasing and cannot be solved
with a regular antialiasing
method.
Valve does not fake geometry
with normal maps!

26. PBR Physical materials
What workflow to use?
Depends on your model.
Metalness can create nasty
artefacts around blending from
metal to non-metal.
Specular has bigger memory
overhead on your VRAM.

27. How does it look in Unity?

29. How to showcase VR?

30. Mixed reality
Green screen your player
Buy a third Vive controller to act
as a camera motion tracker.
Mount controller on the camera
and render the game instead of
the green screen.
Awesome results!
http://www.kertgartner.com/making-mixed-reality-vr-trailers-and-videos/

31. Thanks...
Thank you for your attention!
Now is the right time to ask me any question.
Do not hesitate to try out our demo today.
Also, we are hiring: http://divrlabs.com