VR on macOS preview build

Oh whoops! This build (and Unity in general) doesn't support APFS!
So upgrading to High Sierra (as per https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/06/05/xr-on-ios-and-macos/) and using this build for a VR project isn't at all what you'd want to do like to do!

I've created a bug report #918182 for this.
If however, you work from an external drive, you can open your VR project, however Unity struggles being installed on the boot drive :~(

Good luck!

 

Boo.

 

I'm in the middle of reinstalling everything on to a FAT32 usb stick to avoid having to wipe the computer and reinstall everything.

I don't suppose APFS support is in a potentially a soon to be released patch?

 

easier workaround if you are on 10.13:
- shrink your APFS partition and make a HFS+ partition big enough to hold Unity as well as your Unity projects
- move Unity and your projects to the new partition
- run Unity from the new partition and open your project from the new partition
- notice that things work again

 

I had a very quick go and got it working on Sierra but my mac is a bit long in the tooth for this stuff. At least I now know Apple are supporting the whole eGPU thing via thunderbolt 3 so I can go ahead and buy a new mac without having to wait for some possible future mac pro tower that might take graphics cards.

 

Does this build and SteamVR beta work with the Oculus DK2?

 

The SteamVR page only mentioned the Vive when I looked yesterday.

 

I know this thread is specific to macOS, VR and Metal2, but I have. question regarding Metal2 and older Metal support going forward. Will Unity automatically detect if a device/platform/OS supports Metal2 or just Metal and use the appropriate API? Will Metal2 be a different rendering option in the playerSettings picker for iOS/macOS?

It seems the are some core improvements and API changes in Metal2 but I am unsure how it's going to be handled down the line in Unity when we publish and want to support older hardware/OS's. Will we just pick Auto and Unity will do he correct thing?

Can anyone shed light on this?

Thanks

 

Awesome, good to know, thanks!

 

This is confusing, because the blog post that led me here suggests High Sierra is required, yet the conversation here makes it sound like using Sierra also works. Please advise, do we specifically need to use High Sierra or not?

Am I right in assuming that Nvidia is currently not at all supported in High Sierra? Basically to get started with desktop VR development in OS X, we need both High Sierra and AMD hardware?

I currently have a Node & 1080, and was able to get that working in Sierra using the automate script. I would love the extra performance plus lower energy usage Nvidia gives me, but it seems like at least the near future of OS X VR development is AMD-only.

 

Also, it's not clear if using older hardware (not iMac Pro or external GPU) VR will not work at all, or we just won't have full desired performance.
I mean... can I at least build and test with an older macbook pro?

 

Sierra works. It lacks metal 2 (which I don't think Unity uses yet anyway) and a direct VR display access mode that High Sierra brings. But steamVR does support Sierra, at least at this stage anyway.

There are no High Sierra Nvidia drivers yet and whilst it might be possible to mess with the Sierra drivers to get them to install on High Sierra, its just adding another layer of unsupported mess to the mix to even try this at the moment. I would recommend going ahead and trying SteamVR on your current Sierra setup, and if it works for you then try Unity VR.

 

Not many mac's have built in graphics capabilities to run VR without having such poor performance that the VR experience will suck too much - framerate is hugely important with VR because as soon as you move your head without a sufficient framerate, it feels quite terrible, much worse than poor performance with traditional displays that people can more easily live with when testing. And the GPU's in mac laptops to date are way too poor to come anywhere close to acceptable with VR - perhaps you'll get away with trying it with very basic scenes but even then I have my doubts. There is a reason they have chosen to promote external gpu enclosures for their laptops and VR in future.

Aside from really bad performance issues there is nothing to stop you trying, but you are hugely less likely to have a good enough experience compared with people that are trying to take a peek at this stuff using their old Mac Pro towers with more modern GPU added, or other options that I'm about to go on about in the next paragraph.

The very top model of non-pro iMac 27" that was released the other day will support VR because it has Radeon 580 GPU which is just about good enough for some VR joy as far as I can tell. Still a very expensive option though, but much less than the not-released till December iMac pro. Likewise in the past people have been able to get external GPUs working on machines that don't have thunderbolt 3, i.e. ones with thunderbolt 2 using an adaptor cable to one of the thunderbolt 3 external enclosures that are popping up these days - Apples own external GPU dev kit uses an enclosure that isn't made by them but rather Sonnet, and it is likely that several other manufacturers enclosures will work so long as they use the right thunderbolt 3 controller. Exactly what will be properly officially supported by Apple longer term, both in terms of which Macs, enclosures and graphics cards is unknown but I'm sure it will all be pretty high-end stuff. In the meantime lots of stuff is described as unsupported in apple documentation but that doesn't necessarily mean it won't work, just that people are on their own in terms of support for all the possible alternatives at the moment.

 

Thanks! I can still return my 1080, so I'm trying to decide if I should. Apple's dev kit uses a Radeon RX 580 like you can get in the iMac, which is very close to the recommended specs for VR of a 480. The min spec is a 470.

 

I would be loathe to give up the performance of the 1080 if I you have any other use for it beyond the mac VR stuff, especially as steamVR on the mac is clearly at an early stage. If I knew how well VR was working with High Sierra compared to Sierra then it might be easier for me to judge but I've only tried it on Sierra so far, using a mac that is out of date when it comes to CPU etc but with beefy nvidia GPU. I think I will stick with windows VR until I get a new mac, and am currently working out whether I want to go down the imac road or laptop with external graphics card. Since I already have a good windows desktop machine, dont like the UK price of the top 27" imac with 580 GPU, could do with a portable machine and am fascinated by the external gpu stuff, I guess one of the new macbook pro's will be the best option for me.

 

If AMD Vega stuff was already available then its quite possible I'd tell you to return the 1080 and get one of those instead, but timing not quite right for that at the moment - could be soon though?

 

I got my eGPU devkit from Apple today. It was pretty easy to set up the hardware eGPU box, cables, etc. I got High Sierra (beta) + SteamVR (beta) + Unity (MacVR beta) all set up and it does work with the Vive. In the Steam VR white room, the frame rate is fine, however in Unity's run mode, the frame rate was very bad - like 20 fps in a nearly empty scene. I'm hoping that I just have something set up incorrectly. I have a recent MacBook Pro with touchbar, but not the very latest and I have a slightly older Vive headset. I will try to A/B test with other configurations to narrow down the problem. Did anyone else get their eGPU devkit yet?

 

I just set up my eGPU (the Radeon RX 580 kit Apple sells) and am seeing similar poor performance. I thought maybe it was because I had Unity running on a display connected directly to my MBP, but I set up another monitor and connected it to the eGPU (and disconnected the original; so just eGPU monitor and the laptop display, and the Vive also plugged into the eGPU). The eGPU connected monitor is the main display and Unity starts up on that display, but the framerate when presenting to the Vive is unusably low. The missed frames display on the Vive settings is a blood bath (see attached).

I've restarted SteamVR (and the entire laptop) and tried prodding it in numerous ways, but nothing seems to improve the situation. Any useful debugging info we can provide?

 

I had a chance to play with the eGPU + Unity a bit more, but just briefly. The performance is considerably better as long as the chaperone fences are not active. When I'm in the middle of the room it is much better (still not great) and when I approach any edge, the frame rate drops considerably. Clearly that is some sort of bug, but might be an interesting data point.

I couldn't find any other Mac VR content to try for comparison. The WebVR demos in Firefox Nightly don't seem to recognize the headset and none of the VR stuff on Steam runs on the Mac yet. Is anyone aware of any demo content that can be used for comparison, or maybe OpenVR sample code that runs on macOS?

 

@jm999 Did you try SteamVR demo scenes and The Lab?

 

newbie here using external GPU devkit from apple.

thanks @rsodre for pointer to "the lab renderer". the steamVR demo scene does work. but I could not get "the lab renderer" to work yet.

I also could get https://github.com/BlackDragonBE/ViveAdvancedVrTutorial to work from https://www.raywenderlich.com/159610/advanced-vr-mechanics-unity-htc-vive-part-2

 

The link is still for preview #1, can we get the preview #2 link? By the way, is there a page we can navigate to from the website? Like there was for the Daydream Technical Preview.

 

Thanks, this seems to work around the APFS issue. But I am still hoping for a video or step by step tutorial from someone who is having some success with this. Guess I'll keep trying the versions and scouring this forum!

 

Gotcha, thanks, so I'm assuming by "the version remains the same" you just mean the name of it, but otherwise this second link is actually a different version and that someone forgot to increment it to p2?

 

I have same issue. Miss over half frames even with very simple Unity project... How can I debug into this issue?

 

I'm also having performance issues. Running High Sierra on a late 2016 tMBP with the High Sonnet eGPU.

I followed this tutorial, https://www.raywenderlich.com/149239/htc-vive-tutorial-unity

I implemented the part where we can pick up balls and cubes, and when I tried this out I noticed there is a terrible frame rate. I'm a unity noob, so probably doing something wrong

I uploaded my project here, can any of you guys find the reason for this being slow?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wm5x9q9pwhs549m/Introduction-To-HTC-Vive-Starter.zip?dl=0

 

guys sorry, might be asking something that should be clear for everyone buuuuut... i have a Vive and I install the Steam and Steam VR in my mac. Can I also create VR project with Unity if I have a:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)
with MacOS Sierra 10.12.5
processor 2,3 GHz Intel Core i7
memory 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB + Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

thanks! I'm being very confused about this update! as I just recently started with VR in a windows.. and would love if i can just do it in my mac, as i am simply more comfortable with it..

 

The short and simple answer is no, your graphics hardware comes nowhere close to meeting the required spec for VR.

 

Hey,

is this still the current build for VR on High Sierra or does the newest "standard" beta already contain all the features (at least it seems to contain the APFS fix)?

If this is still the current one, how will we know when to switch? Via this thread?

 

meh.. pity!
thanks.. and just because my university recently bought 3 iMac 21" (waiting for them to tell me which model of the three), would in one of those be possible?

 

Very few macs have the necessary graphics hardware. To somewhat get around this, Apple are supporting external graphics enclosures and this is what they have been selling to developers as a VR dev kit. They arent cheap and they ideally require thunderbolt 3 ports on the computer, although in the past some people have got similar devices working with thunderbolt 2. This might be an option for you one day but my advice at the moment is to wait, especially as even people who bought one of the apple-approved dev kits are experiencing severe performance issues at the moment (see other messages in this thread).

To the best of my knowledge, Macs that have enough graphics power built in and so dont require an external graphics enclosure & card are limited to:

The very top (most expensive) 27" model of the 2017 iMac.
The iMac Pro that isnt available till the end of the year.
Older Mac Pro towers that have had the graphics card swapped for something more modern - but the CPU, bus speeds and macOS compatibility may be issues that prevent these old solutions from being ideal.

 

ok thank you very much for clarifying! super super helpful!

 

I have an existing SteamVR project I'm trying to open use with the new editor (2017 MPB with external GPU & High Sierra).

It works the first time, when it imports all the assets (using Collaborate to download) and I can see the scene, however if I close Unity and try to open the project again, it crashes right after selecting the project to open.

I get a macOS crash report (sent to Apple, not Unity) so I'm not sure what I can do to fix it.
(Deleting the Library folder works, but reloading the project (10gb+) is not a reasonable solution)

Code (CSharp):

1. Crashed Thread:        43  UnityGfxDeviceWorker
2.  
3. Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
4. Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
5. Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY
6.  
7. Application Specific Information:
8. -[MTLRenderPipelineDescriptorInternal validateWithDevice:]:2306: failed assertion `No valid pixelFormats set.'

This seems to be the relevant information from the crash report, and ideas?

 

Sounds a lot like the following bug which they just fixed in the first release candidate of Unity 2017.1:

https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...4.2041241045.1498668327-1453748037.1472658080

 

Yep, that looks like the issue - Any chance we can get a 5.6.X Mac version with this fix @aetfi?

In the mean time I'll remove my preloaded shaders, thanks @elbows

 

Reporting same ultra low framerate; I am more close to 6-8fps sadly. Any improvements ?
Come on Unity Staff, put the beer away for a sec

 

This issue has been fixed by Steam in the latest beta of Steam VR. Just update using Steam and you're ready to go

 

Oh cool ! It should auto update no ? I don't see the any update option here ...
Running 1497390325

Stupid question, where is the update option ?

 

I'm running 1498605258, link here to the release notes. http://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791435040972/announcements/detail/1334604545238544693

 

Yes I saw your comment; but where the hell is the update option ? I don't see it anywhere ... and SteamClient is up to date ...

 

If you have opted in to Steam VR Beta it should auto-update afaik. The version you're running is from June 22nd, so you're waaaay behind.

Can't help you more than this since I'm a noob in the VR-business

 

Had the same issues with framerates with latest SteamVR version (updated 5 minutes ago), however I haven't tried with an external monitor plugged into eGPU so it may be the Editor or Build running on laptop screen that is pulling the framerate down.

 

Woooow ! Ok I'm happy to report that with the latest update I'm around 200-220 fps constant !

 

@DiscoFever - Are you using an external monitor connected to the eGPU, or the standard MBP screen?