4 Month of free Unity pro for rift Devs

[Zoide]

Something to take into account is that > 50% of Oculus Rift sales are going to people who don't live in the United States.

This means that the $1500 price of Unity Pro, which is "nothing" to some US-based people, is actually 50-100% of a full month's salary for software engineers in other countries

Add to that the fact that we'll have to pay $50-$200 more just to have the Rift delivered to us (shipping + import duties).

Edit: My comments are with regards to people who want to use the Rift + Unity for hobby development and/or university projects. If you are a games studio that is going to profit from this then it's another matter entirely.

[mscoder610]

I think CloudHead Games is actually just 3 guys working on The Gallery. I think the main distinction is "doing this full time" or not.

[ChrisJD]

Anyway, sorry to ramble, and maybe some of you don't think I deserve to develop software for the Rift because I am not hard-core enough to spend a measly $1500; you are entitled to your opinion

Unity is not a requirement to develop for the Rift. Not even close, it's just one of the easiest engines to use. You are perfectly free to develop with another engine or write your own.

[Modab]

Anyway, sorry to ramble, and maybe some of you don't think I deserve to develop software for the Rift because I am not hard-core enough to spend a measly $1500; you are entitled to your opinion

Unity is not a requirement to develop for the Rift. Not even close, it's just one of the easiest engines to use. You are perfectly free to develop with another engine or write your own.

I think you misunderstand. Obviously I can program with another engine, and I do plan to walk that road. My point is that some posters are setting an awful lot of gates on what it takes to be a 'developer' and, essentially, who deserves their respect. Nice eye roll.

[WiredEarp]

ChrisJD has pointed out the obvious solution. Simply hack support for the Rift into Unity.

It WOULD be nice if free Unity supported the Rift. While I can swing $1500 for full Unity, many people with good skills may not be in the same financial boat. However, if it doesn't, lets just add this capability ourselves.

[German]

This means that the $1500 price of Unity Pro, which is "nothing" to some US-based people, is actually 50-100% of a full month's salary for software engineers in other countries

Add to that the fact that we'll have to pay $50-$200 more just to have the Rift delivered to us (shipping + import duties).

The weak dollar means you're getting the Rift and Unity far cheaper than we are.

[superbike81]

The weak dollar helps the international buyers, but have you seen the import duties/taxes some of these countries pay? It's absolutely ridiculous. A car made in America, say a $25,000 Mustang for example, can end up costing the equivalent of $45,000+ US in some countries like Finland or other European countries once all the import taxes and duties are paid.

Of course the Rift isn't a car, but some of these guys still pay ridiculous fees just to buy foreign made products. We have it pretty good in the US when it comes to that kind of stuff.

[Zoide]

The weak dollar helps the international buyers, but have you seen the import duties/taxes some of these countries pay? It's absolutely ridiculous. A car made in America, say a $25,000 Mustang for example, can end up costing the equivalent of $45,000+ US in some countries like Finland or other European countries once all the import taxes and duties are paid.

Of course the Rift isn't a car, but some of these guys still pay ridiculous fees just to buy foreign made products. We have it pretty good in the US when it comes to that kind of stuff.

Totally true. Here in Costa Rica the rule of thumb is that everything costs 2X the price you see in the US (eg. Amazon.com).

At least in Finland you have a crazy high per-capita GDP...

[mrklaw]

Don't you need he pro version anyway, if you release something commercially?

It does create a barrier for those looking to experiment and perhaps release code to the community for feedback etc.

I think a 'pay on success' model like UDK would be nice, but perhaps unity sees lots of projects that won't make $50,000 so they wouldn't see a return? But they could do a lower percentage royalty kicking in early for example. Poll eir commercial user base to figure out a sweet spot.

[2EyeGuy]

The update reminded me of this Rowan Atkinson sketch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94o-D2_k5ew#t=128s

[TeraBit]

I think the problem in my mind is that it is the Rift that is something new and special here.
Unity is nice and easy to use and all, but it's just one of several engines out there (one of two that support the rift currently).

But it is the contrast that makes it stand out! It only costs $300 for the best revolutionary VR Gaming Hardware platform to date vs a license for the Unity pro software at a staggering $1500 (5x).

Hmmmm... Value is a hard thing to quantify but 5 x Rifts = 1 License Unity Pro doesn't seem right.

This is especially the case when many people who will be trying their hand at VR development may not be planning to see a return on their investment, but just trying to boost a technology they believe in.

It's not that there aren't alternatives to Unity, but it draws a real contrast in ideologies between Oculus and Unity. Palmer could likely have got away with charging a lot more for his hardware, but chose not to.

[Pingles]

It's the price of a moderately advanced gaming PC.

I realize $1500 is a big number for people but think about it: You want to develop games using (in my opinion) the easiest multi-platform (don't forget that Unity can be used for Android, iOS, PS3, XBOX360, Mac, etc.) system that has ever been made and it costs you the price of ONE development computer?

It's actually a good deal.

It's just not numbers hobbyists are used to dealing with.

[TeraBit]

It's the price of a moderately advanced gaming PC.

I realize $1500 is a big number for people but think about it: You want to develop games using (in my opinion) the easiest multi-platform (don't forget that Unity can be used for Android, iOS, PS3, XBOX360, Mac, etc.) system that has ever been made and it costs you the price of ONE development computer?

It's actually a good deal.

It's just not numbers hobbyists are used to dealing with.

Um. From a purely commercial development standpoint I can see where you are coming from with this. It has the potential to earn it back (although the extra platforms will cost you a lot more money too) and more.

However in the context of the Rift and a small emerging market where most of the early adopters and their experiments will not be commercialised, it does not.

Building in the ability to access the Oculus SDK from the free version wouldn't have cost them many (if any) sales. In fact the desire to add 'bells and whistles' to the VR experience would likely have driven more upselling to Pro.

Like many here I was planning to prototype, test, share stuff that I did in Free, then when I had the beginnings of something cool, upgrade to Pro. Now I will prototype, test, share stuff in UDK.

This move feels like a grab to make a little extra cash off of the popularity of the Rift rather than a vote in support of the future development of VR.

It's best not to confuse Unity's value as a commercial game development engine vs it's value as a Rift VR development platform. It's all about context.

[Pingles]

I admit that's true. It's unfortunate that the demo community has lost Unity as a tool. And foolish of Unity to push them away.

As much of an amazing product Unity is I, too, feel that their "deal" with the Rift is a mistake.
Perhaps if they had just built Rift support as a component of the basic engine itself.

[GeraldT]

This move feels like a grab to make a little extra cash off of the popularity of the Rift rather than a vote in support of the future development of VR.

At this point Unity is sharing it's popularity with the Rift, not the other way around. Unity does not care for consumers, but for developers. And almost every dev knows Unity, in contrast just a few devs so far know of the Rift. Don't get any illusions because of the Rift bubble here! There are hundreds of thousands developers out there and only a fraction knows what the Rift really is, a bit more have heard the name - and there it ends!

If the Rift ever becomes a system/SDK seller, then Unity might think of developing solutions to tackle that group. Until then it's awesome they show as much support as they do.

[Kirito]

This move feels like a grab to make a little extra cash off of the popularity of the Rift rather than a vote in support of the future development of VR.

At this point Unity is sharing it's popularity with the Rift, not the other way around. Unity does not care for consumers, but for developers. And almost every dev knows Unity, in contrast just a few devs so far know of the Rift. Don't get any illusions because of the Rift bubble here! There are hundreds of thousands developers out there and only a fraction knows what the Rift really is, a bit more have heard the name - and there it ends!

If the Rift ever becomes a system/SDK seller, then Unity might think of developing solutions to tackle that group. Until then it's awesome they show as much support as they do.

nicely said geraldt its nice to see unity helps oculus

[ftarnogol]

This means that the $1500 price of Unity Pro, which is "nothing" to some US-based people, is actually 50-100% of a full month's salary for software engineers in other countries

Add to that the fact that we'll have to pay $50-$200 more just to have the Rift delivered to us (shipping + import duties).

The weak dollar means you're getting the Rift and Unity far cheaper than we are.

That if you live in the EU.

In Argentina, 1 U$D = 8.5 AR$ --> U$D 1500 = AR$ 12.750 (that's almost 3 average salaries, or 1/3 of a crappy, compact, used car)

[TeraBit]

At this point Unity is sharing it's popularity with the Rift, not the other way around....
Until then it's awesome they show as much support as they do.

Not sure I agree with that.

I've seen Oculus and the Rift popping up all over the internet and YouTube with many ordinary (ish) people excited and interested despite the dodgy past of many things VR.
That's all without the development kits even being in the hands of most of the developers yet. I didn't see Carmack and Newell etc. coming out to support Unity.

Unity is a nice and fairly popular engine, it does a lot of cool things. But they could have lent a lot more support to the rift than they actually have.

As it is, Oculus even appear to have built the plug-in to support Rift use in Unity. So all Unity have done as far as I know, is give out a longer trial and appear on the Kickstarter video.

[GeraldT]

At this point Unity is sharing it's popularity with the Rift, not the other way around....
Until then it's awesome they show as much support as they do.

Not sure I agree with that.

I've seen Oculus and the Rift popping up all over the internet and YouTube with many ordinary (ish) people excited and interested despite the dodgy past of many things VR.
That's all without the development kits even being in the hands of most of the developers yet. I didn't see Carmack and Newell etc. coming out to support Unity.

Unity is a nice and fairly popular engine, it does a lot of cool things. But they could have lent a lot more support to the rift than they actually have.

As it is, Oculus even appear to have built the plug-in to support Rift use in Unity. So all Unity have done as far as I know, is give out a longer trial and appear on the Kickstarter video.

As said - we are talking about developers, not consumers. If Unity were targeting consumers it would be a different thing. They are not.

EDIT: and as far as Oculus doing the Unity plugin ... yeah, that is Oculus trying to build upon Unitys popularity. Smart move from Oculus, but of little consequence for Unity in the short run. What the long run will bring is still open TeraBit. If everyone would share the VR optimism, then we would hear of new VR headset coming from all directions. The fact that this is not happening shows you how sceptical the whole industry still is.

[TeraBit]

In that respect we are both right. Unity was a platform that Oculus could use (that's where they were a support to Oculus, I agree).

Nobody is saying Unity people are evil or anything. They are just not supporting Oculus with more than token gestures (yet).

Nobody is entitled to more, we choose what we support and pay for it. It is just that I expected more than token gestures from a company on the Kickstarter video. Especially since there is no commercial market for Rift development (yet) so I wouldn't expect it to be treated in the same category as 'Pro Water' or other commercial features. Maybe in years to come it will make more sense, but now it still feels wrong in context.

[GeraldT]

In that respect we are both right. Unity was a platform that Oculus could use (that's where they were a support to Oculus, I agree).

Nobody is saying Unity people are evil or anything. They are just not supporting Oculus with more than token gestures (yet).

Nobody is entitled to more, we choose what we support and pay for it. It is just that I expected more than token gestures from a company on the Kickstarter video. Especially since there is no commercial market for Rift development (yet) so I wouldn't expect it to be treated in the same category as 'Pro Water' or other commercial features. Maybe in years to come it will make more sense, but now it still feels wrong in context.

If you put it that way, then I can only agree. I hope they will open up the issue a bit in the future, but I guess before the do they just want to see how things develop first. Selling some pro licenses is what they aim for. But if selling Rift support for 300$ in the free version is the alternative ... maybe they just go "4 months pro trial" first, so people won't complain that bad when they make the 300$ for Rift support in free Unity announcement. And devs will get used to seeing their games with pro features, which makes it almost impossible to go back to free.

[Aabel]

Not sure I agree with that.

It's simple, seeing the CEO of Unity technologies throw his support behind the Rift and let developers know that they will be adding support to Unity for the Rift gives developers confidence to plunk down $300 for the Rift knowing it that will be usable in a powerful and capable game engine. Unity supporting the Rift so early on broadened the support and added value to the kickstarter, not hard to see that.

I didn't see Carmack and Newell etc. coming out to support Unity.

Why would they support Unity? They each have their own game engines and developer communities.

Unity is a nice and fairly popular engine, it does a lot of cool things. But they could have lent a lot more support to the rift than they actually have.

Yeah it's real easy to sit back in our comfy chairs and criticize the people making things happen and wag our fingers saying 'they could have done better!' Honestly you don't know that, you don't know the details of implementing Rift support into an engine at this point. You don't know how much work had to be done on the SDK. And honestly giving people 4 months (5 months if you are smart about it) of Rift development on Unity pro is damn generous and a ton of support. You won't have to do anything but download it and install. 4 months is enough time to get a prototype or 3 up and running and when the 4 or 5 months of demo is over you can use the SDK to add Rift support to a game engine that closer fits your budget.

[TeraBit]

It's simple, seeing the CEO of Unity technologies throw his support behind the Rift and let developers know that they will be adding support to Unity for the Rift gives developers confidence to plunk down $300 for the Rift knowing it that will be usable in a powerful and capable game engine.

As long as they plunk down an additional 5 x that amount ($1500) in license fees.

Why would they support Unity? They each have their own game engines and developer communities.

You miss the point. Unity, as good an engine as it is, isn't revolutionary. It isn't something that people haven't already done just as well in their own engines. Valve's Source and the Doom engines are a case in point. That's why I made the point that they saw something new in the rift.

Yeah it's real easy to sit back in our comfy chairs and criticize the people making things happen and wag our fingers saying 'they could have done better!' Honestly you don't know that, you don't know the details of implementing Rift support into an engine at this point.

You don't know how much work had to be done on the SDK. And honestly giving people 4 months (5 months if you are smart about it) of Rift development on Unity pro is damn generous and a ton of support.

Well, Unity's David Helgason did say that they didn't do the integration (see: https://mobile.twitter.com/davidhelgaso ... 1588803585 ) so it doesn't appear that they did very much on the SDK from that perspective.

If I had a comparable engine and wanted to show support, I would have either integrated access to the oculus SDK into free or offered a discounted upgrade to Pro for Kickstarter backers.

You do make a good point in saying their giving a four month trial is a form of support (the best kind really, since it raises the profile of the rift among a community of ready made 3D developers!), however, coming in from outside, unless you had a the money to buy pro, it would be foolish to waste time developing on a platform you couldn't use or get feedback from the community about (no distribution allowed in the 4 month trial you see). Also many of those developing for VR have no commercial viability at least until the commercial version of the rift comes out. So it's not really a 'pro' commercial feature from that perspective.

You won't have to do anything but download it and install. 4 months is enough time to get a prototype or 3 up and running and when the 4 or 5 months of demo is over you can use the SDK to add Rift support to a game engine that closer fits your budget.

The cost is not so much an issue in my own case. I may end up using Unity pro in the future, who knows? However, I still do not feel that they have shown the level of support I would have expected from those with their face and logo on the kickstarter.

[Baristan6]

Vireio does work with free Unity!!!!

EDIT

Well it kind of works. It renders one eye twice, and has shader bugs.

I wrote a new shader for Vireio that will take a side by side view and warp it for the rift. I will work on it some more and release it after the Rift SDK is out.
Now all we need is the tracker code linked to c#.

Here is a screenshot using my shader and the free version of Unity.

[DFP]

Cool, does it work in the editor (Game tab)?

[STRZ]

I still do not feel that they have shown the level of support I would have expected from those with their face and logo on the kickstarter.

This could be politics in favor to their butter & bread business which is the mobile gaming market focused on 3rd person, and not so much FPV games. UDK may be harder to use than Unity, but their strenght is FPS games which may fit VR better in the long run.

What i mean with this is, if they push VR too much, the'd lose some mobile 3rd person game devs to VR, playing in the comfort zone of other engines

[Baristan6]

Cool, does it work in the editor (Game tab)?

No. Only works while running the exe.

Here is an early version of the warp shader for testing.

UnityRiftWarp_v0_1a.zip

I don't know Unity well enough to create a stereo side-by-side asset yet.
Just create a game object with two cameras attached, and use settings like:

Code: Select all

Left camera
  Transform
    X= -0.2
  Camera
    field of view 90
    normalized view port
      x=0
      W=0.5

Right camera
  Transform
    X= 0.2
  Camera
    field of view 90
    normalized view port
      x=0.5
      W=0.5

Let me know if it works or not. I haven't done much testing yet. Will post the source on Github soon.

[virror]

Vireio does work with free Unity!!!!

EDIT

Well it kind of works. It renders one eye twice, and has shader bugs.

I wrote a new shader for Vireio that will take a side by side view and warp it for the rift. I will work on it some more and release it after the Rift SDK is out.
Now all we need is the tracker code linked to c#.

Here is a screenshot using my shader and the free version of Unity.

Nice to have it confirmed, the stereo part can probably be moved away from the driver and be made inside unity instead, that would probably speed things up a lot.

[Baristan6]

Nice to have it confirmed, the stereo part can probably be moved away from the driver and be made inside unity instead, that would probably speed things up a lot.

That is how the shader injector in the post above works. The side-by-side is done in Unity, and d3d9.dll only injects a warp shader.

[virror]

Ok, nice. Is it possible to only use the dll "passively" without using the whole Vireio driver?
In that case its easy to just ship it with your game and it will work : )

[nateight]

Vireio does work with free Unity!!!!

Great stuff yet again, Baristan6! Very exciting! You should head over to this thread and compare notes with DaveRuddell - it's looking like you're both very close to a solution to this problem, and if you teamed up you might get there even faster. Keep it up!

[hammerbot]

WTF guys. I thought that mtbs3d was full of serious developers. If you are serious about VR then 1500 dollars is not much for unity license. Of course you can always go with UDK but god forbid if you are successful they will take your arm and leg for down payment.

I know so much of you here are saying that they just want to do tests and stuff and share with everyone and probably not make back their 1500 bucks. Well you know Unity is a great tool and it does not have to change their pricing strategy just so you could use it for prototyping. Some features are PRO only and are locked down. Luckily i see that we have talented hackers here who might find a workaround for this.

I live in east europe. People here are poor (including me). People average pay wage is 600 dollards per month (including mine) and most of the money goes for food because food costs same amount of money like in rich europe country. It amazes me see all this frustration about Unity pro license. It took me 8 months to gather my 1500 dollars for unity pro. And i am the poor easten european guy who is starving most of the time (i am starving right now).

So i hope you understand my frustration when i read when someone constantly whines and wants stuff for free. The point is if you are truly serious about VR and if this is your passion then prepare to STARVE. You have to make sacrifices, save up some money and buy a pro license if you want to work with Unity. Use these 4 months to save as much as you can and i bet that you will earn that money back. God knows i did it. I have made back my 1500 dollars long time ago and while i am not earning tons of money i still have a change to work on what i love.

And i have unity pro

[virror]

I also have Unity pro, but i still want this to work with Unity free because the more choices out there, the more awesome VR stuff will be made : D

[Baristan6]

Ok, nice. Is it possible to only use the dll "passively" without using the whole Vireio driver?
In that case its easy to just ship it with your game and it will work : )

Yes. Only two files are in the zip. d3d9.dll and WarpRift.fx. Just place them in your side-by-side Unity project's dir and it should work. The current version of the DLL waists some resources(creates a unused texture), but I will have that fixed soon.

[virror]

Awesomeness!

[Evenios]

Baristan6: great progress its nice to see some 3rd party Unity Free work around...maybe Unity Free will be able to be used with the Rift down the line or they may offer a middle ground Unity "Rift" version that will add those features from Pro to get the Unity to work well at a much lower cost its too early to jump to conclusions. and sorry i did.

[Modab]

Baristan6 you sir should be hired by either company then if you are able to do what they could not in 6 months......bravo for you.

I hate to be mr grumpy but this proves to me that it WAS possible to use the free version of Unity for the Rift how is that this guy who im sure is a smart guy but how is it that one guy whos not part of any professional company (i dont think?) can make Unity work with the Rift and two companies could not?

Think you sir should message Palmer directly and ask for a good explanation for that.

oh well good work around none the less thanks!

This is just speculation on my part but I would guess there is a difference between getting it to "work" and getting it to work right. If you look at the list of things that the UDK people had to do to properly support the Rift, including optimizing latency in several parts of the render chain, that's a lot more than just warping the view. Oculus would not want to officially support that because of grumpy people. But it would still be awesome to have some basic Unity Free support even if it's a bit buggy or slow.

[Aabel]

But it would still be awesome to have some basic Unity Free support even if it's a bit buggy or slow.

Do you not see the danger in that? If there was offical "a bit buggy and slow" support in a free development environment, developers looking to get into the Rift will try it and think the Rift is a piece of garbage! You can't do things like that! Putting out support in a limited fashion like that with latency will kill VR all over again!

Terrible suggestion! why don't you guys quit being armchair quarterbacks and let the Pro's at Oculus handle this?

[Modab]

But it would still be awesome to have some basic Unity Free support even if it's a bit buggy or slow.

Do you not see the danger in that? If there was offical "a bit buggy and slow" support in a free development environment, developers looking to get into the Rift will try it and think the Rift is a piece of garbage! You can't do things like that! Putting out support in a limited fashion like that with latency will kill VR all over again!

Terrible suggestion! why don't you guys quit being armchair quarterbacks and let the Pro's at Oculus handle this?

I think that hobbyists hacking things together to get things to work is exactly what MTBS3D does all the time. I am talking about all the work that people are already putting into getting the rift and other hmds to work with Unity and other SDKs. I'm not suggesting official support, that should be obvious from my post. It was just a general thumbs up for all the work hobbyists are already doing, and perhaps you should calm down.

[Aabel]

Oh I see what you are saying now, you acknowledge that they wouldn't want to support the buggy latency ridden stuff. My apologies.