While Unity was arguably the engine of choice for indie Rift developers early on, Unreal Engine 4’s recent change to crazy-reasonable pricing and impressive new graphical capabilities has it catching on like wild fire. A VR enthusiast as taken 13 beautiful Unreal Engine 4 demos and compiled them with the latest version of the engine with support for the Oculus Rift DK2. Low-end PCs need not apply!

User tabbott on the Oculus Developer Forums has gathered together 13 beautiful Unreal Engine 4 demos, some official and some not, and compiled them using the latest build of UE4 with support for the Oculus SDK 0.4.1 beta. This makes all of these demos, which are designed as developer examples, compatible with the Oculus Rift DK2. As many of these demos are meant to demonstrate UE4’s graphical capabilities, on top of the 75 FPS requirement of the Oculus Rift DK2, tabbot recommends “lowering settings to Medium or lower for most hardware for the realistic demos. Most machines are not capable of rendering the scenes with Epic settings…”

Furthermore, tabbot suggests the following to best run the demos:

  • Use the “Extend Desktop to the HMD” Display Mode.
  • Make the Rift your Primary Display device
  • The Oculus Service should not be paused
  • Close or minimize any 3D enabled tools (especially Unreal Editor)
  • Use ATI or NVidia Control Panel to force 75 FPS on the Rift Monitor

The Scalability UI may popup on the Rift Display. Not sure what I can do about that but it is difficult to use when it does that. It does not respond to Win+Left or Win+Right. I use Actual Tools Multiple Monitors which is setup to force move windows to desktop with the mouse but that is not a real solution for most users.

What has worked for me is to turn off the Rift. Start the demo. Select the options then start the Rift and then press Play. I have 2 monitors and it moves the dialog from one display to the next but works for me and may not work for
different configurations.

Sometimes I found I had to use Alt-Enter multiple times with game focused to force the game to show up properly.

If the Health and Safety Warning screen does not go away and it frequently does not, I added a command to make it go away. Open console with ~ key and type: hmd hsw

Looks like I’m using some bad defaults in the GameUserSettings. I did not touch those but its autodetecting bad resolutions in “<Demo>\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\GameUserSettings.ini”

You can edit that and set those manually to something more appropriate (I now use something like):

[/Script/Engine.GameUserSettings]
bUseVSync=True
ResolutionSizeX=1920
ResolutionSizeY=1080
LastUserConfirmedResolutionSizeX=1920
LastUserConfirmedResolutionSizeY=1080
bUseDesktopResolutionForFullscreen=True
FullscreenMode=1

Couch Knights

CouchKnights-728x419-536223313CouchKnights_UE440_OVR41.7z (238 MB)

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Realistic Rendering

RealisticRenderingHeaderRealisticRendering_UE440_OVR41.7z (171 MB)


Landscape Mountains (Hang gliding demo)

Image
LandscapeMountains_UE440_OVR41.7z (348 MB)


Elemental (Cinematic)

Image
Elemental_UE440_OVR41.7z (888 MB) (Warning: uses cinematic camera… sickness inducing)


Matinee (Cinematic)

Image
Matinee_UE440_OVR41.7z (296 MB) (Warning: uses Cinematic Camera… sickness inducing)


Shooter (Game)

ShooterGameShooterGame_UE440_OVR41.7z (223 MB) (Warning: Not optimized for Rift)


SciFi Hallway (Scene)

Image
SciFiHallway_UE440_OVR41.7z (170 MB)


Effects (Cinematic + Scene)

EffectsIntroEffects_UE440_OVR41.7z (166 MB)
When cinematic is over, you are dropped a scene which allows free exploration and Rift works better.


Stylized (Cinematic)

PostProcessHeaderStylized_UE440_OVR41.7z (58 MB) (Warning: uses Cinematic Camera… sickness inducing)


Reflections (Cinematic + Scene)

ReflectionHeaderReflections_UE440_OVR41.7z (136 MB) (Warning: Uses Cinematic Camera… Sickness inducing)
When cinematic is over, you are dropped a scene which allows free exploration and Rift works better.


Mobile (Scene)

Image
Mobile_UE440_OVR41.7z (123 MB)
Intended for mobile devices but one of the better Scene Demos for the Rift.


Vehicle (Game)

Image
VehicleGame_UE440_OVR41.7z (264 MB)
Uses third person camera but basically works as a demo.


Blueprint (Scene)

BlueprintExamplesGraphicHeaderBlueprintExamples_UE440_OVR41.7z (173 MB)

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Alkapwn

    I can’t wait to try these out tonight!

    Does anyone know if you need an Unreal subscription to play these? And also if there’s the rotation judder that happens in the Unity demos?

    • Ben Lang

      No subscription needed, these are packaged up just as normal game executables, you don’t need UDK installed or anything.

      Not sure if there are issues with judder. Seems to happen on a case-by-case basis involved hardware and software configurations.

      • Alkapwn

        Awesome! Well I for sure will give these a good run through tonight and see how much my comp upgrades help out with the super demanding games and demos.

        I have people hounding me at work to give it a try. I keep trying to tell them that until a lot of the bugs are figured out on some of the demos it’s not gonna be a super fun experience. I’m super excited for these, and even more so for some Jaunt footy! I missed the AMA, but saw your question. Seems like we shall have to wait a while longer. I really hope that they release something before the CV1, as I think those types of visuals and experiences will sway the masses that may not be gamers.

  • mcgi5sr2

    Has anyone here tested all of these on the DK2? If so could you let me know how the demo compares to running it on a PC normally? I’m interested in what deprecation has been done on either textures or lighting, and if/how the frame rate affects the experience

  • vanti

    The ones using cinematic camera are pretty rough unless you keep your head really still. The problem isn’t so much that the camera moves and pans around but that your own head movement isn’t added to this so you get no feedback on your movement. Is it hard to add head tracking on top of the cinematic cameras? It would be nice to see how much that reduces the issue with cinematic cameras.

  • cazforshort

    I can never get any UE4 demos to work :( The display is messed up even though its stereoscopic. Also the Motion tracking doesnt work at all. Any advice/help? I feel like ive tried everything.

    • Alkapwn

      I’m having issues with UE4 stuff as well. Though for me they aren’t even launching. Keep giving me DLL errors and crashing on startup. Having a hell of a time trying to track down fixes that will actually work >.<

      • cazforshort

        I figured it out!!! You need to download the latest oculus runtime thing from the oculus website. Just go there and click downloads. Works like a charm now.

        • Alkapwn

          Thanks! I’ll have to give this a try tonight and see if that solves it.

        • Alkapwn

          My issue was no Service Pack 1 on Windows 7. >.<

  • Ronario

    Hi guys,

    i am having trouble bringing up the console to get rid of the health warning screen. Got a german keyboard layout and it didn´t work. Checked on in the internet which key it would be on a us layout but even that is not working. tried every combination but no luck.

    Can´t really enjoy these demos right now :(

    Thx for help.

    • Alkapwn

      found this on the forum link:
      If you are not using an English keyboard and ~ is not available then you can change \Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Input.ini and add the following to the end:
      CODE: SELECT ALL
      [/Script/Engine.InputSettings]
      ConsoleKey=F12

  • b02

    When i unpack those, and run exe that is located in binary, says that its corrupt and it wont even run… Anyone got an idea what could fix this ? :)

    • b02

      It was the unpacker that i used. WinRar and Oculus runtime. Works like a charm :)

  • Thank you so much!