Feature - Remote Desktop Documentation for Camera

[hultonha]

Open 3D Engine Documentation / Website RFC Feature Template

Feature - Remote Desktop Documentation for Camera

Currently if working over remote desktop, the camera is extremely difficult to control because internally we 'capture' the mouse cursor (hide it and fix it at a given point). This unfortunately does not play nice with RD (as the client does not currently respect 'set positions' coming from the application).

To work around this, users can disable 'Capture Mouse Cursor' from the settings menu (see below).

This no longer hides the cursor but does make the camera much more usable (this also allows tablets and other devices like this to be used).

It would be very helpful to have an FAQ section about remote desktop (or camera) that could include this information to help surface it to users (currently it's hard to find that this is the solution to the issue).

What is the relevance of this feature?

This will make it much easier to find the solution for using the Editor over remote desktop. There is the possibility of displaying this in the Editor but it's not currently supported and will take longer to implement reliably.

What are the advantages of the feature?

• Help users learn more about the camera
• Improve experience of using the Editor/Viewport

What are the disadvantages of the feature?

• Only downside is maintaining this new documentation/FAQ (we can group this in with related Camera documentation that we will need soon anyway though.

Feature design description

• (see above)

Technical considerations

• None

Are there any alternatives to this feature?

• An alternative is having the Editor 'detect' a remote desktop session and present a dialog/toast message to the user to alert them to use this setting. This is not yet implemented though so docs referring to this will be very useful in the meantime.

Are there any open questions?

• No

[hultonha]

Note: This ticket also relates to this GHI - https://github.com/o3de/o3de/issues/5339

[sptramer]

This is an interesting one, because we try not to document bugs on the website. But because remote desktop is a common configuration for developers (especially right now) we should be considering these as important workflow issues.

I don't think an RFC is appropriate here (it could be moved to the o3de.org repo as a normal issue) but before doing that, it is worth knowing:

• Can this issue be fixed?
• When is this issue likely to be fixed?

[hultonha]

Thanks for the feedback @sptramer

• Can this issue be fixed?
  • With the way we currently handle mouse capturing (hiding the mouse when holding RMB), I don't think it is. The reason for this is we can't reliably send a new mouse position (mouse warp) over RD to recenter the hidden mouse pointer which is why the behavior becomes so erratic. If we don't hide/capture the mouse cursor, things work fine, so the best option I can think of is somehow 'detecting' the user is using RD, and then ensure the 'capture' mode is disabled and cannot be turned on. I'm not sure exactly if/how that's possible, but it seems like the best option (suggested by @AMZN-alexpete)
• When is this issue likely to be fixed?
  • Unfortunately not anytime soon. This just isn't a priority right now (especially as there's a workaround) which is why a doc note I think is so important and helps further mitigate the issue. I'm sure it's something we could get to eventually, and could be something we put a bounty on for a contributor to help with, but right now it isn't something that's going to be fixed in the next 6 months at least as far as I can tell...

[AMZN-alexpete]

Perhaps we could consider creating a page or section specifically to document installing and using O3DE tools online/in the cloud.

[hultonha]

Perhaps we could consider creating a page or section specifically to document installing and using O3DE tools online/in the cloud.

+1 to this, I think that's a good idea as there are likely several related 'gotchas' and known issues people should be aware of when using O3DE over remote desktop/in the cloud