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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Most likely, but for now we elected to not restrict viewers to expensive and relatively uncommon hardware. Since webview was initially intended as a presentation utility, we didn't want to force our users to have to slap a headset onto their clients just to show them a model.

Our engineers are playing HEAVILY with VR headsets and interfaces however, but for the first iteration we Kept It Simple.

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On 11/6/2016 at 4:52 PM, Alan Woodwell said:

I too was hoping that the VR option would be able to be run on Vive or Rift. These provide the full immersion in the 3D whereas the phone in a box is a great step forward but it needs he full immersion capabilities. Will further options be persued?

 

 

Phone in a box solutions have gotten better.  The Google Daydream and Gear VR are pretty immersive.  

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Hi. I have used the Vive one recently on an apartment project and the model is taken to the level where you can use the 2 hand held controls to open cup'd doors and pick up items and walk around with them. Its the ability to interact with the space that is even more exciting. I have used Unity3d and all this is possible, of course the model needs to be built properly and the program (engine) needs to be able to have the capability for movement etc. I am hoping this will be possible in the next few years with VW. 

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  • 5 months later...

Maybe it's good to realise it''s 2017. Models are heavy and not run easily on a phone. Until now I haven't found a solution to get the address bar out of the browser. Until then the webview is useless on a VR Phone.

But to be frank, we have a Vive Dev kit since end of 2015. And it's frustrating to see that running webview on a pc, won't go to stereo because it's not a phone.

I would suggest you take out this blockage and let the community find it's own solutions based on the open standard.

 

Better it would be to support Oculus and Vive. I know it costs time, but there was plenty of preparation time. Would be great if it was an intermediate update in 2017

instead of a 2018 update... Our clients demand it now. Hope you will understand the urgency.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
On 4/26/2017 at 3:54 AM, Michel Buchner said:

Maybe it's good to realise it''s 2017. Models are heavy and not run easily on a phone. Until now I haven't found a solution to get the address bar out of the browser. Until then the webview is useless on a VR Phone.

But to be frank, we have a Vive Dev kit since end of 2015. And it's frustrating to see that running webview on a pc, won't go to stereo because it's not a phone.

I would suggest you take out this blockage and let the community find it's own solutions based on the open standard.

 

Better it would be to support Oculus and Vive. I know it costs time, but there was plenty of preparation time. Would be great if it was an intermediate update in 2017

instead of a 2018 update... Our clients demand it now. Hope you will understand the urgency.


Here is the biggest barrier to us getting those features in the pipe:
60%+ of our users are on Macs, and there is effectively no real VR headset support on Mac.

 

This doesn't mean we don't want to support them, we plan to do so (Engineering literally has one of each VR headset made in the last few years undergoing R&D, they love em and so do I) but the ecosystem on Mac currently isn't ready yet, so anything we introduced would be Windows only, alienating half our base with a brand new feature. 

The decision to go mobile was because Android and iOS both have browser 3D view capability currently via third party software, and pretty much everyone has a smartphone, so work in this area would benefit far more of our users. However, it will not be something slid in for a service pack, that would be a large development effort and would have to undergo the full version acceptance testing in a yearly release.

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  • 3 months later...
On 27/04/2017 at 10:45 PM, JimW said:

Here is the biggest barrier to us getting those features in the pipe:
60%+ of our users are on Macs, and there is effectively no real VR headset support on Mac.

Well, to be frank, WebVR is WebVR... Seems pretty platform independent for me... The only thing Nemetscheck would have to do, is let the stereo 3d view open up in a browser.

Today, I saw Mozzilla officially launched WebVR as a standard feature. I tried the weblink, again, no Stereo view on the Vive.

 

Please...get you stuff together and do something for the community. Don't come with half baked solutions. We are pro's, and pay a load of cash for our licenses within the company. We need to sell the stuff we make in the most professional way, in this case with an HTC Vive. You the software builders need to understand this. You are making the software, for us users. We deliver input and expect feedback on our desires. 

 

If stereo works on a telephone browser, then it should work also on a standard browser with WebVR active.

 

So please, take your customers seriously and set the command that is inhibiting going to stereo in workstation browser to "true". It's already in the code...

 

It took ages to have a sort of decent renderer, now it takes ages to have vr... Sometimes I'm sorry I learned and invested that much time in the program.

 

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
2 minutes ago, Michel Buchner said:

Well, to be frank, WebVR is WebVR... Seems pretty platform independent for me... The only thing Nemetscheck would have to do, is let the stereo 3d view open up in a browser.

Today, I saw Mozzilla officially launched WebVR as a standard feature. I tried the weblink, again, no Stereo view on the Vive.

 

Please...get you stuff together and do something for the community. Don't come with half baked solutions. We are pro's, and pay a load of cash for our licenses within the company. We need to sell the stuff we make in the most professional way, in this case with an HTC Vive. You the software builders need to understand this. You are making the software, for us users. We deliver input and expect feedback on our desires. 

 

If stereo works on a telephone browser, then it should work also on a standard browser with WebVR active.

 

So please, take your customers seriously and set the command that is inhibiting going to stereo in workstation browser to "true". It's already in the code...

 

It took ages to have a sort of decent renderer, now it takes ages to have vr... Sometimes I'm sorry I learned and invested that much time in the program.

 

 


Unfortunately no, WebVR is not completely platform independent, there are a lot of hardware specific tweaks (especially related to VRAM and display) that have to be done for each device and it is not as cut and dry as you might think. There are even separate tweaks per device that need to be done per browser depending on how they have WebVR implemented, as you say Firefox just released a major upgrade and even Chrome didn't have it fully implemented at this time last year. 

 

What browser are you using with your Vive currently? The version of Firefox they just released? 

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Guest AndrewG

Hey@Michel Buchner
 

I am sorry you did not have a great experience with the Web View. We made it very clear to our users that the current version of Web View (in Vectorworks 2017) only supports Google cardboard.

 

We are aware that WebVR is available, and we are trying our best to address this in the coming months. 

 

Hope you can hang tight for a little longer.

 

Thanks!

Andrew

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
4 minutes ago, barkest said:

I know I posted this link in my own thread but it sits in here nicely as well

 

https://www.autodesk.com/products/stingray/overview

 

Autodesk are light years ahead in comparison.


They are likely going to have an advantage for a long time, since they cater specifically to game development channels which already lend themselves to VR, they only have packages available for Windows, and this plus 3DS and/or Maya (and honestly to do anything with architecture or interior design properly, Revit would need to be rolled in there) is way out of our competing price bracket. 

I don't like it either, but this area is most likely never one we will be capable of "beating" AutoDesk in anytime soon. 

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4 minutes ago, JimW said:


They are likely going to have an advantage for a long time, since they cater specifically to game development channels which already lend themselves to VR, they only have packages available for Windows, and this plus 3DS and/or Maya (and honestly to do anything with architecture or interior design properly, Revit would need to be rolled in there) is way out of our competing price bracket. 

I don't like it either, but this area is most likely never one we will be capable of "beating" AutoDesk in anytime soon. 

 

I am not sure it is comparable.  StingRay is a stanalone product.

Where VW could catch up quickly would be to have an export for Unreal:

 

As CiniRender textures get better - you could cut down on the amount of post time in Unreal.

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1 minute ago, JimW said:

You can model and render in it directly? I might need to take another look in that case, I thought it required geometry rendered out from another application in their suite.

 

By stand-alone - I did not mean it was an all inclusive one stop shop - only that it served its own specific purpose and was not built into Revit as a AEC feature.  I think all of these game engines require pre-modeled assets. 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
Just now, Tom Klaber said:

 I think all of these game engines require pre-modeled assets. 


THAT is the key. A lot of it may look easy, but fully baked (generally; scenes rendered in excellent quality beforehand so the viewer doesn't have to wait to view items) environments are many steps away from where Vectorworks products are at the moment.

 

I would love for us to head that direction faster, but if those in this thread need these solutions immediately, we may not be able to accommodate. I don't want to give the impression that things like that are right around the corner for us. In fact, next year it's looking like a larger focus on quality and repairing backlogs of existing issues may win out over advanced futurist development, which honestly im kinda happy about.

 

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Just now, JimW said:


THAT is the key. A lot of it may look easy, but fully baked (generally; scenes rendered in excellent quality beforehand so the viewer doesn't have to wait to view items) environments are many steps away from where Vectorworks products are at the moment.

 

I would love for us to head that direction faster, but if those in this thread need these solutions immediately, we may not be able to accommodate. I don't want to give the impression that things like that are right around the corner for us. In fact, next year it's looking like a larger focus on quality and repairing backlogs of existing issues may win out over advanced futurist development, which honestly im kinda happy about.

 

I am a big proponent of concentrating on core competencies and outsourcing everything else. 

If VW can play nice with Unreal (whatever that means - I have not used it)- so that your model can serve as the base for whatever needs to be done to make that happen - that should be enough.   Get better at modeling, get great at BIM, and as long as you can talk and work with the other guys - let them do what they do better. 

 

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1 hour ago, JimW said:

In fact, next year it's looking like a larger focus on quality and repairing backlogs of existing issues may win out over advanced futurist development, which honestly im kinda happy about.

 

 

Had hoped that happens for VW 2018 ....

 

 

1 hour ago, Tom Klaber said:

If VW can play nice with Unreal (whatever that means - I have not used it)- so that your model can serve as the base for whatever needs to be done to make that happen - that should be enough.

 

Beside that Modo meanwhile has direct connection to common game engines and some

further compatibility options within Modo,

exchange to game engines by FBX, Collada, ... has never been much of an issue.

So I see no problems using a game engine from this side.

 

But it would not be much fun, like into Modo, as long as the geometry gets exported from VW

the way it gets exported. You are too much occupied by repairing and cleaning up.

C4D is a bit of an exception for several reasons, it eats VW geometry and it looks quite ok there

most of the time.

All 3D Polygon Software expects proper Face Alignments and Vertex Welding.

Otherwise you will normally get into trouble with things like Edge Beveling, Refraction,

Round Edge Shaders, Selections, GI, OpenGL, ....


So I am also on the quality before new features side.

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VW > C4D is rock solid

 

C4D > Unity3D is rock solid

 

that is the pipeline I am currently working on albeit very early days as I have to grapple with c# (don't have to but want to as it is not a prerequisite)

 

From what Jim says on the timeline then I am happy with looking at alternatives

Edited by barkest
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

 

7 hours ago, Michel Buchner said:

Well, to be frank, WebVR is WebVR... Seems pretty platform independent for me... The only thing Nemetscheck would have to do, is let the stereo 3d view open up in a browser.

Today, I saw Mozzilla officially launched WebVR as a standard feature. I tried the weblink, again, no Stereo view on the Vive.

 

Please...get you stuff together and do something for the community. Don't come with half baked solutions. We are pro's, and pay a load of cash for our licenses within the company. We need to sell the stuff we make in the most professional way, in this case with an HTC Vive. You the software builders need to understand this. You are making the software, for us users. We deliver input and expect feedback on our desires. 

 

If stereo works on a telephone browser, then it should work also on a standard browser with WebVR active.

 

So please, take your customers seriously and set the command that is inhibiting going to stereo in workstation browser to "true". It's already in the code...

 

It took ages to have a sort of decent renderer, now it takes ages to have vr... Sometimes I'm sorry I learned and invested that much time in the program.

 

 

So after some further digging, yeah VR browsing is extremely fragmented. The current support list for browsers vs hardware:

https://webvr.rocks/

Screen Shot 2017-08-09 at 4.31.02 PM.png

 

The Vive is only supported on a few browsers, and even then they're mostly in an experimental phase. The official release build of Firefox doesn't have it in yet. 

I can understand a desire to push tech forward faster, but the stance of "It's already there you just haven't turned it on yet." is both untrue and not helpful to development. Please make sure to make specific wishes for functionality along with what software you want to use with what hardware, since there is no global unified implementation currently for this platform. 

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11 hours ago, JimW said:


THAT is the key. A lot of it may look easy, but fully baked (generally; scenes rendered in excellent quality beforehand so the viewer doesn't have to wait to view items) environments are many steps away from where Vectorworks products are at the moment.

 

I would love for us to head that direction faster, but if those in this thread need these solutions immediately, we may not be able to accommodate. I don't want to give the impression that things like that are right around the corner for us. In fact, next year it's looking like a larger focus on quality and repairing backlogs of existing issues may win out over advanced futurist development, which honestly im kinda happy about.

 

Oddly enough - I JUST discovered TwinMotion Today.

It works really well.

IT handles OBJs out of VW like a champ.

Archicad Already had a direct sync link - Can VW??

 

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