SteamVR - How to display content in left/right eye?

Question was:
SteamVR - How to display content in left/right eye?

Solution is:
By manually adding a GameObject with the SteamVR_Render component on it to your scene, you can specify a left and right culling mask to use to control rendering per eye if necessary.

 

When I look at the SteamVR_Render script, I see fields for External Camera and Tracking Space, etc, but I'm not seeing anything related to culling mask per eye. Can you provide more detail?

UPDATE: I figured it out. See my reply below.

 

Here's the solution (as of Unity 5.4.0b17, with SteamVR 1.1.0 plugin):

1. Drag SteamVR "CameraRig" prefab onto the scene, per usual.
2. Add two empty gameobjects to the scene. I named them CamLeft and CamRight, but they can be anything.
3. Set both of them to the exact same coordinates in the scene.
4. Add a SteamVR_Camera script component to each. I found it in SteamVR/Scripts/SteamVR_Camera.
5. Create two new layers: "LeftEye" and "RightEye" (or equivalent)
6. On the first object, in inspector, set Target Eye: Left, and Culling Mask: "LeftEye". Likewise on the second gameobject, set "Left" and "LeftEye"
7. Ensure that whatever objects you want viewed with left or right eye are assigned to the appropriate layers, and at the same coordinates.

 

I don't see Target Eye on the camera. There is only Target Display.

EDIT: Nevermind, figured it out: you have to enable VR Supported to see that option on the camera.

 

My "solution" posted above worked for about a day, but now I cannot get it to work without having two exception thrown, (one for each eye camera): "MissingComponentException: There is no 'Camera' attached to the "CamRight (head)" game object, but a script is trying to access it."
Not sure what's going on...

UPDATE: If the instructions above aren't working for you, see my next post for a solution. Good luck!

 

For some reason the emptys that I created (as mentioned above) weren't instantiating(?) cameras at runtime. So here are updated steps:

1. Drag SteamVR "CameraRig" prefab onto the scene, per usual.
2. Add two empty gameobjects to the scene. I named them CamLeft and CamRight, but they can be anything.
3. Set both of them to the exact same coordinates in the scene.
4. Add a SteamVR_Camera script component to each. (I found the script in Assets/SteamVR/Scripts/SteamVR_Camera.)
5. In the inspector, on the "SteamVR Camera" component you just added, click the "Expand" button. It ought to create three new nested objects in your scene: "CamLeft (origin) > CamLeft (head) > CamLeft (eye)". (See attached screenshot.)
6. For some reason, the first time I click Expand, it only creates two objects and the third is missing. But clicking the same button a second time creates another set of objects with the correct hierarchy (and also causes my empty to disappear, which is fine). I then also deleted the incorrect "CamLeft (orig)" that only had one child.
7. Repeat steps 5-6 for CamRight. Now you should have your two cameras set up correctly.
8. Create two new layers: "LeftEye" and "RightEye" (or equivalent)
9. In Heirarchy, drill down to the "CamLeft (eye)". In inspector, set Target Eye: Left, and in Culling Mask, untick "RightEye" Do the equivalent for "CamRight (eye)" with opposite values.
10. Ensure that whatever objects you want viewed with left or right eye are assigned to the appropriate layers, and are positioned the same coordinates.

In the end, your hierarchy ought to look like the attached screenshot. Good luck!

 

How do your steps allow for setting up multiple camera layers, with the main camera being set to depth only? I don't want to display different things in each eye (what's the point of that by the way?).

You said this was a fix for the issue posted in the other thread here: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/multiple-camera-layers-in-unity-using-steamvr.398976/

 

I figured it out, I just had to also add a steam vr camera object to my skybox camera. I could then set the camera rig's eye camera to depth only and use proper layering.

 

Getwilde, you are the light of my day with this solution. Anyway, I did not get it to work, perhaps you can share a working Unity file with this configuration? I must inform that I am a newbie in Unity development.

Well Thanks again. It works if I use beta build 5.4!

 

Doing this makes the gameobject that i've added a steam vr camera to to rotate with the head. Any way to disable this?

 

I am really struggling with this also. Where in the hierarchy is you skybox camera located? Is it a child to the Camera(eye) object?

Also whenever I have a second SteamVR Camera attached to any camera in the scene the editor won't run the game.

 

Thankyou so much.
I tried doing this directly on the rig and it kept crashing.
I don't know why it works this way but it does. Thanks again

 

Sorry, what do you mean by "create two new layers"?

 

Unity Layers: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Layers.html

Also, I made a few shaders that separate the Left/Right eye content:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/88499

 

It seems like adding in the [CameraRig] to your scene initially doesn't really do anything. Once the process of setting up the two new cameras is complete, it seems redundant, as disabling still allows everything to work properly. Am I missing something, or is it not needed?

 

I followed these steps but only 1 cam, CamLeft (GameObject) is shown, Even in the Hierarchy, CamLeft is placed after CamRight. I think it's overriden. Still stuck with it.
Also my GameObject not only have this --> "CamLeft (origin) > CamLeft (head) > CamLeft (eye)", but there was also (ear), so I deleted it. Is it okay ?

 

Does anybody know if you can do this without enabling native virtual reality support? I'm building an overlay only app targeting openvr and afaik I have to disable unity's native openvr support to be able to do this, but I've gotten to a point where I need to hide certain layers for each eye.

Edit: Just to be clear, if you don't enable native vr support there is no Target Eye field in the Camera component mentioned above, rendering the previous advice unusable.

 

Hey guys,
Sorry for bumping up an old thread but I don't have permission to make a new one.

I'm looking to do the same thing and I'm trying to create an app for my Oculus Quest.

As the most basic level I want the left eye to see a blue cube where the right eye sees a red one.

I've been in successful in having separate left/right eye content if I use the OVRPlayerController/OVRCameraRig style projects because it has distinct cameras and I can easily separate the content through layers.

However, newer tutorials mention that we should be using the "XR" style collections now, such as the "XR Rig". These seem much nicer to work with, but I cannot for the life of figure out how to create separate left/right eye content because it seems to just be a single camera.

Things I've tried:

1) Creating multiple cameras (each targetting just one eye) as children to a parent object and binding that parent object to the XR Rig. This was a fail. It seems any camera that doesn't target "both" eyes doesn't work at all.

2) Creating a custom shader to apply a different material, depending on the eye. I looked at some old shaders as a baseline and apparently a lot of events are no longer triggered (such as OnPreRender) in modern versions of Unity (or maybe because of XR?). It makes it not possible to distinguish between the left/right eye content. So this was a bust as well.

Is there anything else I can try? I'm OK with getting a little advanced if that's what it takes. Worst case I can stick with the older "OVR" style objects.

Thank you!

John

 

So, I finally got something working with the single camera XR Rig. I read through so many different posts about people trying to solve this issue and most of the answers were "Well that's not supported yet, but you can probably create a shader", but no one seemed to be able to point to one. I don't really know anything about shaders but I scraped something together and attached it here. It's extremely simple but it works for the use-case outlined in my previous post.

Also attached a screenshot of the shader parameters. You can attach a different texture to each eye and also set the opacity of each eye. If you want to show two completely different objects for each eye, you can basically just set one of the opacity to 0 for the eye that you don't want to see it, and then do the same for the other eye.

Hope this helps someone.

John