Oculus Developer Release Notes: v31

Oculus Integration for Unity - v31

• Experimental release of Passthrough API in OpenXR lets you build and test apps that seamlessly blend the real and virtual worlds. With this experimental release, you’ll be able to customize the look and feel of passthrough within your app, including composite passthrough layers with other VR layers, styling and rendering passthrough images to a custom geometry. The Integration SDK contains Passthrough samples that demonstrates some important features and its usage.
• Shipped Vulkan validation layers in the OS, recommended for all apps using Vulkan.
• OVRPlugin with OpenXR backend is now default in Unity 2020 or higher versions, and optional in the Unity 2019.4 version. You can switch between them from the Oculus > Tools > OpenXR menu.

• PC compositor layers being upside down and throwing a D3D11 error in OpenXR
• Oculus Quest FFR in Vulkan in OpenXR
• Random eye buffer tearing in OpenXR
• A vertical seam appearing on equirect layers
• Color Scale/Bias for OVROverlay on PC OpenXR
• Unity compositor layers being upside down for OpenXR Vulkan

• GetAdaptiveGPUPerformanceScale is deprecated
• GetAppPerfStats/ResetAppPerfStats is no longer supported in OpenXR
• Deprecated the following OVRBoundary APIs and functions:
• enum value OVRBoundary.BoundaryType.OuterBoundary
• struct OVRBoundary.BoundaryTestResult
• OVRBoundary.TestNode()
• OVRBoundary.TestPoint()
• OVRBoundary.GetVisible()
• OVRBoundary.SetVisible()
• Focus Aware is now always enabled because it's a mandatory requirement for every app to support focus awareness. Learn more about user experience guidelines on the Focus Awareness documentation.
• Added a checkbox to generate the Android Manifest tag when using experimental features. To test experimental features, you need to put the headset in experimental mode. Learn more about experimental features on the Experimental Overview page.
• Mixed reality capture is supported when building Quest apps with OpenXR
• Added support for basic vibration haptics in OpenXR

• If you're using the Spectator Camera feature and you switch the view, the casting video is flipped upside down.
• Workaround: Set `SetMrcFrameImageFlipped` to false. For more information, see the Known Issues section.
• Vulkan Quest apps may crash when you select Use Recommended MSAA Level in OVRManager and request audio permissions after the splash screen runs.
• Workaround: Clear Use Recommended MSAA Level check box in OVRManager and manually set the appropriate MSAA level (recommended 4x) in Project Settings > Quality
• Changing modes in Lipsync_Demo on Oculus Quest is currently not supported.
• Unity has a known issue such that parenting one VR camera to another will compound tracking twice. As a workaround, make them siblings in the GameObject hierarchy
• Using Unity Universal Render Pipeline will not set the MSAA level automatically.

• Support for hand-tracking is currently restricted to the baseline OpenXR spec. Therefore, additional hand-tracking features such as collision capsules, hand input metadata, and runtime hand meshes are not yet supported. In addition, there is a known compatibility issue with the thumb trapezium bone (Thumb0) in the OpenXR-based OVRPlugin. We'll announce a fix when available in our release notes.

• You may experience long UI stalls or poor performance with the Unity editor when targeting Oculus Rift on Windows 10.
• Workaround: Run Windows update to ensure that you have the latest version of Windows 10.
• The combination of all Unity versions with Oculus runtime 1.17 and higher and Windows 10 + Creators Update results in spurious WM_DEVICECHANGE reports in the editor, even in non-VR projects. You may not notice any impact, but if you're connected to certain USB devices, you may find the Unity editor becomes non-responsive and you needs to terminate it from Task Manager.
• Workaround: Update to the Beta runtime available on our Public Test channel. We are currently working with Unity and Microsoft on a permanent solution.

• Currently, in the Guardian System API, ovr_SetBoundaryLookAndFeel does not take effect if the headset is not worn when the call is made (e.g., on start).
• Transparent VR Compositor Layers do not currently support multiple layers of occlusion.
• Rift MRC is not supported in OpenXR backend. You can switch to the legacy backend to continue using Rift MRC.

Unreal Engine 4 Integration

• Unreal 4.26 (Latest)⁠

• Added Graphics Showcase sample. Run Setup.bat or Setup.sh to download the content directories for the sample.
• Added performant tone mapping techniques for Quest that use Vulkan subpasses for Fades in Level Sequences and for Scene Color Tint, Color Grading LUT, and Vignettes in Post Process Volumes. For an example of them in action, see the sample described above.
• When using Perfetto⁠ to analyze Oculus apps built with UE4, you can now see track event markers.
• When packaging Oculus mobile apps, the unnecessary LOCK_WAKE permission is no longer automatically added to the Android manifest.
• In Oculus VR Plugin settings, you can now select XR API backend. To access, Project Settings > OculusVR > General > XR API. There are three options:
• Legacy OVRPlugin: default; uses the OVRPlugin codepath and library with the CAPI/VRAPI backend (same as previous releases, most stable/compatible for now).
• OVRPlugin OpenXR: also uses the OVRPlugin codepath but instead uses the library with the OpenXR backend (missing a few features and may not be as stable).
• Native OpenXR: uses UE4's OpenXR codepath and is the equivalent of the OculusOpenXR plugin previously (requires the OpenXR plugin to also be enabled in UE4 and is missing some features at the moment).
• For Vulkan mobile apps: in the case of sceneColor we have single-sample and MSAA buffers. The MSAA buffer isn't going be filled up by the GPU on tile-based renderers and memory isn't allocated for it (memory-less/transient) to save ~80Mb RAM.

• Fixed LateLatching mid frame submission issue on 4.26. The New UE4 code inserts extra vkQueueSubmit right after a new frame begins, delaying BeginLateLatching() a bit to avoid mid frame flushing between a BeginLateLatching and EndLateLatching pair.
• GLSL compiler now uses correct precision on vertex shaders which was using highp before.
• Mobile VR preview no longer renders to the wrong size after being run for the second time.
• Fixed an instant splash screen copy failure when building APK.
• To fix PC shader array alignment issue, disabled array-multiview optimization for PC, as it increases support matrix for not a lot of benefits (PC GPUs don't really mind doing if-else instructions).

• LastStereoSize reset messages no longer spam log cat.
• The Oculus Platform Tool now contains a convenient download link for ODH.

Platform SDK

• New Multiplayer features to help users get into apps together more easily.
• Invite to App - Invite Oculus friends & Recently Played With users into already existing lobbies.
• Invite Link - An open Invite Link that can be shared to anyone to meet up together in an app.
• Roster - The Roster helps users view which people are in the game with them.
• Rejoin - Rejoin allows users to decide whether to be put back into a session with friends after a disruption.
• The existing Group Launch features has been moved into the new Multiplayer Features documentation.
• The existing Rich Presence feature has become Group Presence.

Mobile SDK

• As of August 11th 2021, OpenXR is the recommended API for development and the Mobile APIs are moving into Compatibility Support. For more information, see Oculus All In on OpenXR: Deprecates Proprietary APIs.
• This is a maintenance release. There are no developer-facing changes in this release.

Other Developer Updates

• A marketing attribution dashboard was recently added to help you track how effective your marketing efforts are. For more information, see Marketing Attribution Analytics.