Mirror View Mode: Black game view screen

[nitz]

Hello!

I'm reporting this because the readme asked to!

Here's my current Open VR Settings.asset:

%YAML 1.1
%TAG !u! tag:unity3d.com,2011:
--- !u!114 &11400000
MonoBehaviour:
  m_ObjectHideFlags: 0
  m_CorrespondingSourceObject: {fileID: 0}
  m_PrefabInstance: {fileID: 0}
  m_PrefabAsset: {fileID: 0}
  m_GameObject: {fileID: 0}
  m_Enabled: 1
  m_EditorHideFlags: 0
  m_Script: {fileID: 11500000, guid: 7a32bfe54d957ec4581fa4a630f1647a, type: 3}
  m_Name: Open VR Settings
  m_EditorClassIdentifier: 
  PromptToUpgradePackage: 1
  PromptToUpgradePreviewPackages: 1
  SkipPromptForVersion: 
  StereoRenderingMode: 1
  InitializationType: 1
  EditorAppKey: application.generated.unity.<application-name-here>.exe
  ActionManifestFileRelativeFilePath: StreamingAssets\SteamVR\actions.json
  MirrorView: 3
  PreInit: 1
  HasCopiedDefaults: 0

Since switching to Mirror View Mode "Open VR", I get a black game view both in the editor and in builds. The actual headset display (Vive Pro Eye) appears fine. In editor, when starting to 'Play', it seems a frame is rendered in the game view before going black.

My color space is set to Linear, and I'm using Single Pass Instanced as a rendering mode. I'm using Unity 2020.3.21f1, on a Windows 10 Pro (19043.1288) machine.

I'd love to provide any other details I can to help track down the issue, but I'll just go back to Left Eye mirroring in the meantime.

Cheers!

[misunkim]

I have the exactly same problem (but I only tested it in the editor, not in builds). I'm using Unity 2020.2.6f1 on Windows 10. If I restart the SteamVR, then I can see the Open VR mirror view in the play mode again, but once I quited the play mode, change something in my Unity script (as simple as add one line of "Debug.Log("hello world"), and script recompiles, and if I enter the play mode again, then OpenVR mirror view turns blank again. The only fix is to stop play mode, restart SteamVR and move back to play mode.

As @nitz mentioned, I will also go back to Left Eye mirroring view in the meantime, because restarting SteamVR everytime before I move onto a play mode is quite tiring. I really hope there is a fix to this. OpenVR left/right blended view is much better than left or right eye alone, and as an researcher who use Unity/steamVR for cognitive science experiment, I want to monitor what my experiment participants see real time as close as possible.

Thanks!

[1runeberg]

For 2020, we suggest using Unity's OpenXR plugin. The XR plugin wasn't fully vetted for 2020 and our focus at the moment is on OpenXR as well.

Please note the openvr texture is the same texture that's shown in SteamVR's built-in mirror.

[nitz]

Thanks, @1runeberg, That makes a bit of sense but should probably be mentioned in the readme/docs. I do have a few questions though, and I'd be glad to take these to a new issue/channel if need be:

• When you say y'all's focus has been on "OpenXR", what exactly does that entail? (As in, you're working with Unity directly for what they ship in com.unity.xr.openxr, or does it just mean you're working on implementing the OpenXR standards from the SteamVR runtime side?
• Is the guidance still as it says in the readme of this project, that to get access to controllers and other forms of input, that we should be using the SteamVR Plugin? The Unity OpenXR package mentions that it has HMD + Controllers for feature parity for 'all other conformant runtimes', including SteamVR, but then also explicitly mentions "SteamVR Plugin features not available." I'm not sure what features it is explicitly referring to there.
• This may be a question better asked on https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steamvr_unity_plugin, but: should we expect to see a "SteamVR" feature group package for com.unity.xr.openxr?

I will add that with Unity suggesting people use the LTS release for production use, it does leave things in a bit of an odd spot to me. Is this plugin intended to be for prepro/prototyping only? (At least until 2021 goes LTS, anyways.)

I apologize for being so long-winded with all the questions, but we're just doing our best to try and set up our project for the best longevity & path forward, and things are just a bit muddy for where we should head at the moment 🙂

Cheers!