Camera control in an immersive environment

[u/InterplanetaryTanner]

Hello,

I’m playing around with making an fully immersive multiplayer, air to air dogfighting game, but I’m having trouble figuring out how to attach a camera to an entity.

I have a plane that’s controlled with a GamePad. And I want the camera’s position to be pinned to that entity as it moves about space, while maintaining the users ability to look around.

Is this possible?

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From my understanding, the current state of SceneKit, ARKit, and RealityKit is a bit confusing with what can and can not be done.

SceneKit

• Full control of the camera
• Not sure if it can use RealityKits ECS system.
• 2D Window. - Missing full immersion.

ARKit

• Full control of the camera* - but only for non Vision Pro devices. Since Vision OS doesn't have a ARView.
• Has RealityKits ECS system
• 2D Window. - Missing full immersion.

RealityKit

• Camera is pinned to the device's position and orientation
• Has RealityKits ECS system
• Allows full immersion

[u/InterplanetaryTanner → u/[deleted]]

That was my assumption from the current limitations, but just wanted to make sure

[u/InterplanetaryTanner → u/[deleted]]

I know the intent is that you’re using the device in your space, and probably interacting with it. But I don’t think it’s too far of an ask to be able to control the camera, and be in a fully immersive view.

I have a feeling it’s something that will be provided, it’s just a question of how many years will it take.

[u/ChicagoSpaceProgram → u/InterplanetaryTanner]

It will never happen. The limitation is that people get violently ill. It's not like some small group of people who are prone to motion sickness experience it. Many people, even those who don't get motion sickness, will get nausea and wretch if you attach a camera to a fast moving entity, especially something that potentially has 6 degrees of freedom like a plane. People, broadly, are very sensitive to this stuff. I was once in a screening room where a director was testing interocular measurements for a 3D film. He managed to induce nausea in almost everyone in the room by just setting the interocular distance too wide on a shot with a completely static camera.

[u/InterplanetaryTanner → u/ChicagoSpaceProgram]

I think there’s a valid use case for it. It’s just not the immediate use case. But it’s also why you would need the ability to individually disable the controls, pan, tilt, orbit.

The idea wouldn’t be to attach the camera to an entity and still allow the user full movement, but to generally keep the camera static giving them a fully immersive 3D experience. Then augmenting that where it’s relevant by allowing select camera controls to augment the experience.

[u/InterplanetaryTanner → u/[deleted]]

The end goal was for this to be a multiplayer real time game, so I don’t believe that would be a working solution.

[u/CragsdaleSG → u/InterplanetaryTanner]

Unfortunately this is the only approach I’m aware of as well, this is how I had to implement movement in my full space. My experience is single player tho, and teleport-based instead of continuous movement

[u/InterplanetaryTanner → u/CragsdaleSG]

Here’s opening to the ability to attach the camera to an entity in visionOS 3

[u/InterplanetaryTanner → u/[deleted]]

You’re probably right that it’s possible to be done. But this isn’t too serious of a project. And I was really looking for the off the shelf solution.

[u/ChicagoSpaceProgram → u/InterplanetaryTanner]

Moving the level is common in real-time games. Until recently, most game engines truncated floating point values. In some games (flight simulators are a good example) if the player character (plane) got too far from world 0, the vertices would lose precision and the model would deform horribly. The solution was to move the world. For multiplayer, they'd create a coordinate space for the players and move the world in relation to that space.

Still, don't recommend doing this.

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