First Impressions & Suggestions

#6

Ah, btw, if the rectangle is

A B
D C

where A is the point where you started and C is the current position of the controller, then floating numbers appear on A-B and on B-C. A-B is always the “first” dimension. You know when the roles of B and D in the picture above are reversed: then you would see the floating numbers appear on A-D and D-C. In other words, the “first” dimension is always the one with a floating number attached to A, and the “second” dimension is always the one with a floating number attached to C.

Doesn’t mean your idea of different colors isn’t valid :slight_smile:

#7

  1. Click release move click release. Happens somewhat inconsistently, seems to depend upon movement. Coincides with the controller model disappearing. Tooltips remain in correct place.

  2. Joystick does turn green, but it is kinda hard to notice.

  • Might want to have it change colors when you open the menu instead of after the menu closes.
  • Might want to consider what to do if someone whats to create a circle with a really large number of sides. Maybe have holding down the stick jump up in larger increments if you hold it for a while. Or even just have it jump up at a constant rate if you hold its instead of requiring multiple toggles.
    *Right now increment is mapped to forward on joystick. Can we map it to both forward and right. Similarly map decrement to both backward and left? Accommodate more use styles.

  1. That sounds good

  2. Btw, can we get the correct controller model? I think the one used now was for the rift, but the rift s controller looks different & the dissonance is annoying.
    Maybe making the big circles on the controller partially transparent would look cool.

  3. Can we add the option to set diameter to circle tool?

#8
    1. Ah, if the controller disappears it might be because of it getting disconnected somehow. Even if it’s only temporary, it will force a cancel. Maybe we should not force a cancel if the disconnection is short enough?
    1. I’ll see what I can do to improve the joystick experience…
    1. On my to-do list already :slight_smile: We just made a preliminary Quest version, and the controllers are the same as the Rift S, so it should be easy to port that to the PC version even if I’m not able to directly test the Rift S.
    1. I think that in SketchUp you’d do a 5m-diameter circle by typing “5/2”. You can do the same in VR Sketch, both in the numpad and by voice (“five meters” (pause) “divided by two”).
2 Likes
#9
  1. It can, but fails when using decimals. Wierd

How impossible would it be to support another extension like “MsPhysics”?
In my testing (by rapidly raising & lowering my headset), the position displayed in VR only updates when the simulation is stopped.
“Movable Joints” might be easier since its position updates as soon as you complete an action with its movement tool. Though it is much less interesting.
If its possible at alI I think getting some sort of physics working would give you the currently untapped physics simulator vr playground market.
Speaking of potential markets, I would look into a workflow for converting you sketchup house into an oculus home or VR chat environment & post a detailed tutorial. There are plenty of people who would shell out to be build their own house in vr & import it into oculus / steam home.
Mostly just spitballing things I think would be cool atm.

#10
    1. What are you trying to do exactly? Can you give an example?

MsPhysics: it’s probably hard to get good FPS rates if the physics engine runs on the sketchup side and we need to transfer all data every frame over a socket connection using Ruby code. My guess is that MsPhysics doesn’t try to update the sketchup model every frame, either, but renders things directly when animating. That makes it close to impossible to integrate. At best we could redo something very similar on the VR Sketch side, but that’s quite a lot of work.

Workflow for converting to Oculus Home or VR Chat: yes, it definitely looks interesting.

#11

My specific use case is a complex linkage for a puppet leg I am working on that I think would be easier to do if I could move the parts around in vr while I work on them.
Tooling around with MsPhysics for a bit though, it is a bit overkill / overcomplicated.
What I need is less of a physics engine & more of a constraint solver.
The “movable joints” extension seems more like what I am looking for user interface wise, but it just forms a tree of parent > child relationships and moves the children of the selected group. To move linkages you need some sort of constrains solver.

[ Feature Request ]
Ability to enter fractional values in the numpad (division symbol is replaced by backspace once first character is entered)
[ Feature Request ]
Ability to switch units in numpad between metric / imperial. Was pleasantly surprised that voice supported this, but voice is to wibbley to do it consistently.
[ Optimization Idea]
Maybe it would help to have an option to auto hide/unhide group/components based on their longest dimension vs scale. Of course need to remember what stuff is manually hidden.

#12

Ability to enter fractional values in the numpad: noted, will be added!

Ability to switch units in numpad between metric / imperial: so far we follow the configuration in SketchUp. If you go to Windows, Model Info, Units, then you can change that setting per model. If you pick something else than Decimal, the numpad will follow accordingly.

Maybe we could add both of these in a “more options” or “advanced mode” setting for the numpad.

Optimization idea: we already hide groups that are too small, at least when you view the model at a lower-than-1:1 scale. But maybe you have a point that the ratio should be configurable.

#13

The difference is that on the desktop I can just type 10mm or 10" to specify my units regardless of the default unit. Can’t do that with the numpad.
Hiding it behind a menu would add way to many actions to a really common workflow.

#14

I am a bit doubtful that it’s “really common” to want to enter numbers in several incompatible units—but I can accept that it’s occasionally useful. What I had in mind was a setting that you activate, or an “expert mode / basic mode” switch in the numpad itself. Once in expert mode, you always get an expanded numpad with these extra options. If you don’t need them any more, you can switch back to basic mode and get a more compact numpad again.

As always, a UI needs to balance adding more and more special-purpose features versus being kept simple, and the “expert mode / basic mode” switch looks like a good solution to me in this case. We try to keep the integration with SketchUp as close as possible, but having a UI that makes sense in VR is even more important. For some aspects it’s closer to a smartphone than a desktop (like the absence of a real keyboard).

#15

This option of using VR sketch in Quest is great, especially if used in collaboration mode.

#16

Hi everybody,

this is my first post and I thought this may be the right place. We have started with VR just a couple of days ago with the intention to bring our Sketchup models into virtual reality. We are using the Oculust Quest for this purpose. It showed to be a very good solution - special thanks to VR Sketch!

Overall it is just great: stable, performant and versatile. The reactions of people using the glasses with VR-Sketch on it are really fantastic!

However, on “first sight” I found some topics for improvement (or learning, if I just did not get by now).

Shown/unshown components in scenes:
I have learned that the scenes feature is relatively new in VR-Sketch, so I do not want to expect too much. We often use scenes to illustrate alternatives in our furniture projects. I.e. a round counter vs. an edgy one. Using VR-Sketch linked to SkechUp on the computer, everything works fine. Once uploaded to the cloud and opened independently from the computer, the scenes are still there but the shown and unshown objects will not change as they would when connected to the computer. Did I do sth. wrong or is it not implemented yet?

Simplified mode:
Our intention using VR and VR Sketch is to let our customers experience their projects in VR - like a walk through the new kitchen, reception area, living room or complete building. The functionality with basically all tools on hand is great but will be used mainly by us creating and optimizing the projects. It would be great to have a sort of “presentation mode” with a limited functionality (e.g. scale) and tool set like teleporter, laser, freehand move - or configurable as stated before:

I believe this will avoid “unwanted actions” by used with besically no experience in using the software or even VR.

That would be it for the moment, thanks again for your great product and best regards

Volker

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#17

Hi, and welcome! Thanks for your comments.

Shown/unshown components in scenes: indeed, this doesn’t work on the cloud models. VR Sketch records only the position for each scene. When you’re using SketchUp, then the scene change is sent to SketchUp too, and it might cause some components to be hidden or shown—this fact is then sent back to VR Sketch. But this information is not preserved in the cloud models. The scenes can have a number of effects in SketchUp, and we didn’t investigate them so far.

Simplified mode: yes, that’s a good suggestion. Also, it is strange when viewing cloud models to see all the tools when many of them don’t work, so it would be another use case for a reduced tool set. Note that right now, you can set an option (in SketchUp, “VR Sketch -> Configuration…”) to disable all the tools apart from the teleport, but I guess you’re looking for an intermediate solution.

#18

One workaround for the lack visibilty issue with scenes might be to make entirely different copies of your model with the only difference being the things that would be hidden / show, then move between them.

#19

Thank’s for your help!

This will work for most scenarios, but intermediate would be nice…

I thought about that, too. But quickly toggling back and forth would be great. However, connected to the PC it works and that is great enough for the moment!

#20

Hi again,

there is another thing I learned during a customer presentation - bad or no network connectivity will make things complicated.

There are the two possibilities for the Quest, either to connect with the cable and let the computer (if capable) do the rendering or sendig it wirelessly via WiFi or cloud and leave the rendering to the Quest (which I prefer).
I suggest to implement using the cable for quick file transfer to the Quest, then plug off the cable and continue wireless or offline.

This would help to improve the collaboration possiblities when there is neither a high end laptop nor a fast network connection available. This probably is a typical German problem with regard to the network capabilities…

BR

Volker

1 Like
#21

Hi, good suggestion!

I just realized: there is a quick hack that lets you do that already (on Windows; it does not work on Mac so far). Connect your Quest by cable and start SideQuest (it is the program you used during installation of VR Sketch on the Quest). Pick the icon that says “Run ADB commands” among the top-right icons, then “Custom command”. The command to run is:

forward tcp:17352 tcp:17352

You can later check if the “forward” is still running (it stops if you remove the cable, for example), by running the command

forward --list

As long as the forward is running, in SketchUp, choose “Send to VR on this PC” (not “on Oculus Quest”!) and it should work directly. It doesn’t actually start VR Sketch on the PC because it thinks there is already one—because of the forward command above. Later, if you remove the cable, then both sides will report you as disconnected but you can continue to view the model and use the teleporter.

1 Like
#22

Long time no see :wink: We are a bit busy - however heavyly using VR Sketch for customer presentation. Not so much playing aroung. However - thanks for the hack I will try out.

There is another thing I struggled with. Under certain circumstances the pop-up window for starting the transfer to the quest does not appear.
In “work mode” I have my laptop in the base and a second screen connected, everything works fine. In presentation mode using only the laptop, it may happen that the window is not visible and I cannot “collect” it to the only remaining screen.
In presentation mode with a projector or tv-screen connected, randomly the pop-up window appears or not. Could it be a graphic resolution thing? I have a feeling that it comes down to 4K screens…

My quick hack then is three times tab and enter. However maybe it is interesting to know for you.

BR Volker

#23

I suspect the problem comes from saving the dialog’s position on a multiple-screen configuration and then restoring the dialog at that same position on a single-screen configuration. Can you try https://vrsketch.eu/download/baroquesoftware_vrsketch_v11.9.4.rbz? I tried to make that dialog appear at a fixed position.

Note: this is a .rbz which you have to install inside SketchUp. It is very small because it is lacking the VR support for PC. It is only suitable if you are using VR on the Oculus Quest. If that’s a problem for you, you can re-install the older complete version after testing. We’re about to make the next release, so it would be nice if you can confirm if this “v11.9.4” fixes this problem or not.

#24

Dear Arigo,
thanks for your quick support. Now it will work as long as I keep the windows collected at my primary screen. Closing and opening will result in the exact window position since last closing the application.
However, when moving the dialog to the second screen before closing sketchup and changing the creen setup, the dialog window will be lost until next usage in the intital setup. I have tested it for single screen mode and second screen (tv).

For your next release - it would be great if hide/unhide funktionality in scenes (or in general) could be implemented. Also animated dynamic components with relative values / formulas (e.g. for movement of drawers relative to the depth of the furniture) would be great. These are the most time consuming points when transferring our “standard” models into “VR-Sketch suitable” models.

BR Volker

#25

Hi,

I think there is some confusion. In version 11.9.4, the window with the title “VR Sketch Remote” appears always at exactly the same hard-coded position; if you move it around, its new position is not saved. I can confirm it’s the way it works on PC. Are you sure you are testing 11.9.4? Please double-check in “Extensions -> VR Sketch -> About”. I have tested 11.9.4 on SketchUp 2017 and 2020 on PC.

We released version 12.0.0 with the same hard-coded position logic, so you can also try to upgrade to 12.0.0. We’ll consider your points for the next release, but with no guarantee about dynamic components: this requires reimplementing a complex spreadsheet-like system just to track a few positions…

Armin