Software Overview

Table of Contents

• Audio
• Scientific Visualization
• Immersive Analytics
• User interface
• Social VR
• Interaction
• Cave / nDisplay
• Other

This page should give an overview of relevant internally and externally developed software for Unreal.

Audio

• 3D Audio

  • Virtual Acoustics Plugin
    This Plugin allows the user to use the VA Server from the Institute of Acoustics (ITA) of the RWTH Aachen to playback sounds in Unreal. These virtual sound sources components can be attached to any actor and can have directivity. Furthermore, the image sound source method is implemented for reflection. See Unreal VA Demo for examples.

    Maintainer: @jonathan.ehret, M. Schmeling

Scientific Visualization

• File Formats

  • PROPOSED: openVDB/nanoVDB Integration
    [Add short description here.]

  • PROPOSED: NVIDIA Omniverse (Universal Scene Description)
    [Add short description here.]

  • PROPOSED: Support for CAD files
    [Add short description here.]

• Simplex Rendering

  • Points

    • GPU Point Cloud Renderer
      Efficient rendering of point clouds (no loading)

      Maintainer: Valentin Kraft (external)
      License: The plugin is free for personal and academic use. Commercial use has to be negotiated

    • LiDAR Point Cloud
      Loading and rendering of point cloud data

      Maintainer: Externally maintained
      Examples: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/lidar-point-cloud-sample

  • Lines

    • Line Rendering Plugin
      This plugin adds functionality to Unreal which allows a highly performant rendering of static and dynamic (poly-)lines.

      Maintainer: @david.gilbert

  • Triangles

    • Procedural Mesh Component
      Component that allows you to specify custom triangle mesh geometry. Also available for blueprints.

      Maintainer: Epic Games

• Fields

  • Volume Rendering

    • Voxel Plugin
      Voxel Plugin - Dynamic Terrain for Unreal Engine

      Maintainer: Epic Games
      License: MIT (basic) or custom (premium)

    • Vector Data Visualization

      Maintainer: D. Helmrich

  • PROPOSED: Particle Tracing
    with a paradigm for virtual wind tunnel (https://i.imgur.com/Yw1oH46.jpeg)

Immersive Analytics

• PROPOSED: Brushing and linking
  [Add short description here.]

• PROPOSED: Multi-view semantically and/or spatio-temporaliy linked views
  [Add short description here.]

  Examples: ...

• PROPOSED: Embedment of annotations
  [Add short description here.]

  Features:

  • Placement Algorithms
  • ...

User interface

• WIP: Pie Menus
  ViSTA-like pie menu for unreal.

  Maintainer: S. Oezer, @spape

• VisUI
  [Add short description here.]

  Maintainer: K. Karwacki
  Features:

  • LUT Editor
  • Color Picker

• Likert Scale Plugin
  A plugin to Simply create Likert Scales in VR. It also provides standard questionnaires

  Maintainer: @jonathan.ehret

  WIP: currently J. Müller does a redesign of the complete plugin

• Widget Interaction Plugin
  This plugin allows to easily interact with UMG Widgets, both in VR and on the desktop

  Maintainer: @jonathan.ehret

• PROPOSED: 2D UI via inline browser
  [Add short description here.]

• PROPOSED: Speech Interface
  A way to easily interact with a program using only spoken natural language

  Features:

  • Text-to-speech for annotations
  • Voice commands for virtual assistant (see Social VR, planned soon)
  • Limited conversation with virtual agent (partially work in progress, see Social VR)

Social VR

WIP: Virtual Humans
A WIP plugin to simply add virtual humans with different features to your application. See also Unreal Character Test for reference.

Features:
A planned/achieved feature list can be found here

WIP: Body Avatar
To simply add a calibrated avatar to your application Currently done in a bachelor thesis by P. Nossol

Maintainer: @jonathan.ehret, @Andrea.Boensch

Interaction

• Interactions metaphors which are not native in Unreal

  • Cave Gun
    [Add short description here.]

    Maintainer: @spape

  • PROPOSED: Jedi pick-up (From Half-Life Alyx)
    [Add short description here.]

  • PROPOSED: Force grip
    [Add short description here.]

  • PROPOSED: Intent-select
    [Add short description here.]

  • PROPOSED: World-in-miniature?
    [Add short description here.]

• Navigation

  • Navigation System
    [Add short description here.]

    Examples: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Resources/ContentExamples/NavMesh/index.html

• Locomotion

  • PROPOSED: Teleportation
    [Add short description here.]

  • PROPOSED: Walking in place
    [Add short description here.]

• Desk VR interaction techniques

  • PROPOSED: Desk menu
    [Add short description here.]

  • PROPOSED: When Spatial Devices are not an Option: Object Manipulation in Virtual Reality using 2D Input Devices
    [Add short description here.]

Cave / nDisplay

• nDisplay Launch Button Plugin
  [Add short description here.]

  Maintainer: @spape

• nDisplay Extensions Plugin
  Unreal Engine nDisplay plugin extensions, including custom CAVE game modes, pawns, and more.

  Maintainer: @all

• Cave Overlay Plugin
  [Add short description here.]

  Maintainer: @spape

• Launch Scripts
  Contains the configurations and scripts for launching the Unreal nDisplay projects in the Cave and on the TDW.

• CI Scripts
  This repository stores the shared scripts, the launcher metadata file, and two sample .gitlab-ci.yml that are necessary to build unreal projects on our build machines.

  Maintainer: @spape

• aixCAVE WebLauncher \ Web UI for launching Unreal demos in the cave and on the TDW.

  Maintainer: @martin.bellgardt

Other

• Unreal Project Template
  Unreal Engine project template catering to the common use cases at RWTH VR. Contains nDisplayExtensions, AixCAVE config files, launch scripts, and more.

  Maintainer: @all

• Project Setup Script
  The setup script to initialize new unreal engine projects based on our template as well as managing their plugins.

  Maintainer: @simon.oehrl
  Features:

  • Project initialization
  • Plugin management (installing/updating/removing)

• Google Drive Upload
  [Add short description here.]

  Maintainer: @spape\

• WIP: Study Framework
  A framework to quickly build studies, providing most building blocks needed

  Maintainer: @jonathan.ehret, M. Schmeling
  Features:

  • Session Management
  • Logging
  • Virtual Questionnaires

• Universal Logging Plugin
  This plugin was developed to have a unified way of logging that can be used in shipping builds.

  Maintainer: @martin.bellgardt

• PROPOSED: Interface to python for domain researchers
  [Add short description here.]

• PROPOSED: Elements/techniques to reduce cybersickness
  e.g. https://github.com/angsamuel/GingerVR (for Unity)

• Unreal Plugins
  Contains the plugin list that is used by the Project Setup Script.

  Maintainer: @simon.oehrl