Platform Support questions

[Yung Youngstr]

Hello. Thanks for all the hard work you have put into Obi. Your efforts have really paid off! I have two vaguely related questions about Obi:

1. I noticed on your site that you support Windows/OSX/iOS/Android, and that the only other platforms you plan on supporting are PS4/XB1. Does this mean that UWP will never get support? I understand that it may be quite a bit of work, but I don't believe there's anything that would make such a thing unfeasible. I would say there's quite a bit more demand now that the Windows Mixed Reality Platform, both Hololens and immersive headsets, are using UWP. Myself in particular am developing for the platform, and I just hit a brick wall with the lack of platform support.

2. While loosely on the subject of VR, I noticed that your website says Obi Fluid requires some funky two-camera setup "since the renderer does not support single-pass stereo rendering". When you say "the renderer", are you referring to Obi's fluid renderer or Unity's renderer? I ask because Unity does support single pass stereo rendering, and it has been supported as early as the Unity 5 cycle.



                                                     ta-da!

So am I missing something here? Will you guys bring native support for Obi's fluid renderer to single pass? It would be a killer feature to add, since single pass heavily decreases CPU usage, freeing up valuable resources for the fluid simulation. And I have no clue whether support for the newer "single pass instanced" rendering would be any harder, but that's also a valuable feature to support, since it brings CPU usage even lower than traditional single pass does.

Thanks for your help guys

[josemendez]

Hello. Thanks for all the hard work you have put into Obi. Your efforts have really paid off! I have two vaguely related questions about Obi:

1. I noticed on your site that you support Windows/OSX/iOS/Android, and that the only other platforms you plan on supporting are PS4/XB1. Does this mean that UWP will never get support? I understand that it may be quite a bit of work, but I don't believe there's anything that would make such a thing unfeasible. I would say there's quite a bit more demand now that the Windows Mixed Reality Platform, both Hololens and immersive headsets, are using UWP. Myself in particular am developing for the platform, and I just hit a brick wall with the lack of platform support.

2. While loosely on the subject of VR, I noticed that your website says Obi Fluid requires some funky two-camera setup "since the renderer does not support single-pass stereo rendering". When you say "the renderer", are you referring to Obi's fluid renderer or Unity's renderer? I ask because Unity does support single pass stereo rendering, and it has been supported as early as the Unity 5 cycle.



                                                     ta-da!

So am I missing something here? Will you guys bring native support for Obi's fluid renderer to single pass? It would be a killer feature to add, since single pass heavily decreases CPU usage, freeing up valuable resources for the fluid simulation. And I have no clue whether support for the newer "single pass instanced" rendering would be any harder, but that's also a valuable feature to support, since it brings CPU usage even lower than traditional single pass does.

Thanks for your help guys

Hi there!

1. We do plan to support UWP. It might be in fact easier to support than PS4/XBOX. However -and I cannot stress this enough- adding support for more platforms is (from our pov) secondary to making the product as robust as possible and adding important missing features. So we cannot give ETA for a given platform. Our priority is making it run as smooth as possible in the platforms that we already support.

2. In that particular sentence we refer to our fluid renderer in particular, and screen-space splatting in general. Unless we switch to an alternative rendering method (which is not likely as screen space splatting is probably the most efficient fluid rendering method as of now) it will be difficult for us to support single pass stereo, however we are looking for alternatives.

[Yung Youngstr]

Hi there!

1. We do plan to support UWP. It might be in fact easier to support than PS4/XBOX. However -and I cannot stress this enough- adding support for more platforms is (from our pov) secondary to making the product as robust as possible and adding important missing features. So we cannot give ETA for a given platform. Our priority is making it run as smooth as possible in the platforms that we already support.

2. In that particular sentence we refer to our fluid renderer in particular, and screen-space splatting in general. Unless we switch to an alternative rendering method (which is not likely as screen space splatting is probably the most efficient fluid rendering method as of now) it will be difficult for us to support single pass stereo, however we are looking for alternatives.

Thanks for the quick response! In response to number two, how fruitful do you think it would be to look into other rendering methods that are compatible with single pass? Do you think the performance loss of rendering anything that's not screen-space splatting would moot the performance gain of single pass/single pass instanced rendering? Also, how feasible do you think it would be for me to look into such a thing myself?

[PratikShah]

Hi there!

1. We do plan to support UWP. It might be in fact easier to support than PS4/XBOX. However -and I cannot stress this enough- adding support for more platforms is (from our pov) secondary to making the product as robust as possible and adding important missing features. So we cannot give ETA for a given platform. Our priority is making it run as smooth as possible in the platforms that we already support.

2. In that particular sentence we refer to our fluid renderer in particular, and screen-space splatting in general. Unless we switch to an alternative rendering method (which is not likely as screen space splatting is probably the most efficient fluid rendering method as of now) it will be difficult for us to support single pass stereo, however we are looking for alternatives.

Thank you for response. Its helpful to me.