Nick Donaldson is a Senior Designer at Epic Games, and I caught up with him at Oculus Connect to talk about the design process behind The Showdown Demo. This demo was meant to be the highest fidelity VR experience with AAA-game polish up to that point and time. They ended up re-using a lot of assets that were designed for other experiences, but in the end The Showdown Demo was an epic slow-motion walk through a war scene unfolding as you’re slowly moving down a road towards a giant robot who leans down to scream in your face. Here’s a video of what was shown within the demo.
Nick talks about some of the easter eggs and design process that they went through in order to create this experience. At Oculus Connect, he and Nick Whiting talked about some of the optimizations that they had to make within Unreal Engine in order to get the Showdown Demo operating smoothly. Here’s a video of that talk:
One of the fun anecdotes that Nick shares in this interview is the first VR social interaction that he had with Nick Whiting while working on the Couch Knights demo. There were still early in the debugging phases of creating a multiplayer experience, and he talks about how much body language and information that they were able to communicate with each other non-verbally. Nick Whiting looked over at him and just froze. Nick Donaldson shared a gut-level response of “Sup?” with a head nod, which Nick replied to with his own head nod and “Sup?” It sounds like a simple interaction, but until you’ve had your first social VR experience like this, then it can be quite a profound experience knowing that there’s a human being on the other side of all of the movements of an electronic avatar.
Nick says that Epic Games is very interested in continuing to explore the medium of virtual reality, and that they’re really excited about the potential for creating more games and other VR experiences moving forward.
For more information, then be sure to check out the Road To VR write-up of their Unreal Engine optimization talk or the summary from the Unreal Engine blog.
Become a Patron! Support The Voices of VR Podcast Patreon
Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
Subscribe to the Voices of VR podcast.
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. I'm Nick Donaldson. I'm a designer, artist, pretty much everything that's not coding. And we just finished doing the Showdown demo that I think was the last demo that they showed on the new headset here. So I've, along with a couple of other folks at Epic, have been kind of building these demos intermittently every time there's a new device. We're pretty interested in VR at Epic. Nick Whiting over here is kind of the guru. He considered himself, he started off as a one-man, he's a spare-time team, and he kind of eventually started winning over all of the head honchos at Epic, you know, convincing them that this is something that's really kind of important, that something's happening, so. Yeah, I got a chance to do the Crescent Bay demo of the last scene, was like, the thing that was really striking to me is that you're walking in slow motion through all these things that are happening and flying at you, and, you know, I just felt like, oh, I need to dodge these things, even though I know they're not real, but I just, I felt like a body level, like needing to kind of weave around all these rocks flying at me. That's the presence, right? That's kind of the magic of presence, knowing that this thing that's coming at you is a pretty innate, low-level system in your mind that just knows that it needs to avoid the stuff coming at your eyes. There's been some pretty entertaining moments where people coming and testing out the demo on my desk would kind of swing their arms and hit me in the balls or something like that. It's just a lot of awkward moments where people kind of are no longer aware of the real world around them and they're so engrossed in what they're doing that it's kind of just a bit magical, you know. And so what were some of the considerations in terms of creating this experience within virtual reality and using Unreal Engine? So the first thing that we know about making a high impact. So that was the kind of the goal of this demo was to make something that was visually impacting. You know the previous two demos that we did had kind of different focuses since playing with scale playing with a social multiplayer experience in this one. We just wanted to kind of. Focus on having a really high visual impact since we knew this prototype was going to give you the best experience in the device yet So blowing shit up is one of the key elements of the experience since you've tried it You know seeing things flying at you coming past you and and just kind of being immersed in this thing. So I We made it all kind of in slow motion where we could take advantage of existing animations that we had. It was all a bit of a hack, honestly, but it really focused on what we thought was the core experiment that we were trying out. Yeah, another really striking moment was when there was, like, an explosion of the car and you kind of saw this shockwaves flowing out real slowly. And maybe talk about that portion of the demo and what you were trying to do there. Yeah, we actually spent a large period of time working on exactly that explosion. So, the first attempt at making an explosion was to have, you know, the typical 2D billboard animated explosion thing that we've done in games for years. We first tried that, and when you go into stereoscopic vision, there's this kind of ugly mirror of truth that shows you exactly what's happening. And so an animated billboard looked like an animated billboard. So we ended up having to build everything in three dimensions. We had a three-dimensional explosion. Distortion actually works amazingly well because it's calculated per eye. And so all of these effects, to make something like that work, we had to kind of rethink. And so we have, I think, a dozen different kinds of effects going on for that explosion. We have the distortion wave. We put a bunch of debris that we built. I think there's a can of Oculus Cola flying past your eyes. We thought that was a pretty cute little Easter egg. I'm not sure how many people actually noticed that, but it was a lot of fun. And so then we actually put a... It was actually a bit of a joke. We put a body inside of the car. Did you actually look up over your head when the car was flying? Yeah. Oh, actually I did. I did. I looked up and I did see the body. That was the thing about the demo is that it was going in slow motion. So it really gave you the sense of being able to really look all around and look up. And so I just, it was just amazing to kind of, you know, cause if rocks are flying over your head, you don't ever get a chance to look at it at this time warp sense of being able to see things slowly fly over. But yeah, I did actually see the body in the car and notice that. Yeah, that was one of the considerations that you were asking about earlier. We, to give people a real chance, we just made everything slow motion and it felt great, you know, it worked really well. So, and we hid numerous things in different kinds of places. One of our designers, Fred Marcus, he tried the demo when it was almost done and he looked into the car and he said, oh, you should put a teddy bear in there or something, just something, you know? And so we ended up putting the body in there, the person, because, you know, if you're going to look, if you're going to go out of your way to look up inside there, we might as well give you something, a bit of a treat, you know? And so maybe talk about the end boss sort of robot thing at the end. What was that about? So most of this demo was content that we stole from different demos prior. The end boss robot was from a Samaritan demo. And it turns out there was a boat ton of animations that hadn't been used. And so we stitched a couple of them together until one of our animators saw them. And he was like, mm-mm, nope. And so we ended up actually redoing the animations. Yeah, he was the character that we already had. And I think the very first thing that we did once we got him in was to have his face in your face. And the very first iteration of that was he wasn't even animating at the end there, but the camera was moving slower and slower towards the blades on his face. And people would just kind of inch kind of awkwardly into the back of their chairs as the blades move close to their eyeballs. I kind of wish we left a little bit more of that exact moment in there. But, you know, it still had this pretty cool impact when he comes down into your face and, you know, you get the real sense of space, your personal space being invaded, which works really well. And were there any other intentions that you were trying to get out of this experience? Like, what would be the ideal situation of someone walking away, what you wanted them to take away? Yeah, I mean, the sense of presence that you get from the Crescent Bay device is just astonishing. Having so much stuff going on that you feel like you didn't actually get to see it all in this actual world that you were in. If you turned around halfway through the demo, you'd actually see those people behind you. They're still running, they're still shooting their guns at the robot. There are still pieces of debris flying and simulating all around you. you're actually in an experience that you probably don't actually get to experience fully the first time you play it through. So we really just wanted to make it an experience that you would walk away impacted by. That was pretty much the goal and I think we did a pretty decent job of that. Yeah, it wasn't like necessarily a game or it was just sort of like this cinematic and so do you guys expect to do more type of cinematics as just sort of a demonstrating for what's possible in VR? Well, we're pretty much running through a bunch of ideas that we have. You know, the previous demo we did, Couch Nights, was more of a game than it was a cinematic. And this is the first time we actually made a cinematic in VR. And so we wanted to kind of figure out what is a cinematic in VR versus some of the other ones, which were just pure spatial experiences. And the other ones were more suggestive of games, and this one was more suggestive of an actual cinematic experience. Going forward, who knows which way we're going to focus. You know, I want to see, personally, I want to see more games versus just these cinematic experiences, because these are, you know, that's the AAA of VR, basically. But, you know, there were only a small handful of us. There were two of us making most of the art content, an audio guy, an animator, who spent a week and a half. And we built this experience in a month and a half. You know, it's not, this isn't serious AAA money thrown at this thing. This wasn't a huge production. And I think we got a lot of bang for buck out of it. Was there anything in terms of the audio that was happening that I was sort of so overwhelmed with the visual, I wasn't necessarily paying attention to the audio components. But what's happening with the audio in it? The audio, you're right. I mean, it kind of takes a backseat. But without the audio, a lot of the impact is lost. It's one of those things where a lot of the time with audio, you don't notice it's gone until it's gone. And Joey, our sound guy who worked on it, did an amazing job. We would love, love, love to see more fully spatialized audio simulation stuff. You know, the stuff that they're talking about at the keynote, that's great news, you know. That's the kind of stuff we want to see more of and we're really thrilled that there is more of a focus on that. And so since you did work on Couch Nights as well, what were some of the takeaways that you got from that experience? Couch Nights was an awesome social experiment. It was a lot of fun. When we first got this body avatar tracking to your head and then replicating that information to the other person you're playing with, When we first got that working, it was kind of a jarring experience because I wasn't sure if it was a bug or if it was actually working. I looked over and I saw Nick and he looks normal. You know, he was doing human things. He was looking around and just kind of, I could kind of actually even picture him adjusting his headset. It's the way his character was wiggling a little bit. And then he looks over and he just looks at me. It's almost like a nightmare. It's like suddenly this avatar gets possessed, you know, and then he looks. And I was like, the only reaction I could do was just to nod at him like, sup. And I was like, what's he gonna do? And he just like, all I see back is this, sup. And this social experience between us was just awesome. He's over in Seattle, and I'm over in North Carolina. And to be able to feel like you're in the same room with somebody. We sat there nodding at each other for like 20 minutes. It was so dumb, but it was just so novel. And it's just something I hadn't experienced before. And that was the coolest thing that we had. You could also control these little characters. You could run around the room and jump around. One of the interesting things was that we had a coffee table in front of you, and that's where we would spawn these characters. And they would spawn in, boom, and people would sit down the first time they'd put it on, and they'd move their, you know, wiggle the joysticks, see what was happening, and they'd walk their characters in circles a few times, and then they'd usually accidentally fall off the edge of the table, and they went, oh! It can go off the table, and then they would kind of push the limits. People aren't used to having experiences that are new, that are novel. And so they would run around the room a little bit, and they'd kind of test something out. It's like a child looking back at their parents saying, can I do this? I'm going to get away with it if I steal the cup off the table or whatever. And so they would run behind the couch and say, I can't see my character. And then we made this effect so you can see the outline of the character. And they're like, oh, you got me. And they would keep pushing and testing and poking at it. And so we did the same thing while developing it. And we tried to kind of design little solutions to these little things. And all of the objects in the room were simulating. And so people would hit those by accident. And they'd fall over. And they'd be like, oh, it's cool. And it was just like a fun little sandbox for people to experience something new. And do you have any advice for people that are using Unreal Engine? Because I know there's also Unity. And so if they do decide to go with Unreal Engine, what kind of advice would you give them when they're designing experiences for VR? The tools that you use, the kinds of things that you're doing in VR, the tools that you use aren't probably going to make a big difference. What is going to make a difference to you is how quickly you can work on things, how easily it works for you. You plug in the device, you full screen it, stereo vision works. It's super easy in Unreal to do that stuff. But advice on building 3D experiences in Unreal is probably similar to advice on building 3D experiences in other engines. The really interesting things that you're going to be doing, that you're going to be interested in doing, are probably universal. Yeah, I know talking to some of the Kite and Lightning people who did the Senso Peso, John Duar was saying that they actually had to start to turn off some of the features within Unreal Engine because of the requirements that it would use for people's processor. And so I guess there's this trade-off right now in terms of creating a VR experience that people can handle on middle to low-end hardware versus, you know, not everybody's going to have the highest-end gear. Yeah, so, I mean, turn it all off. Make it run as fast as possible. There are actually some effects that are detrimental to VR as an experience as well, like a lot of screen space effects, like dirt lens, lens flare, stuff like that. It really feels like you've got jello in your eyes or something like that, you know? You're rubbing Vaseline on your glasses. So turn off all the effects, make it run, make it run fast, and then see what you can get away with. The talk I just gave was about tweaking the knobs, making trade-offs, picking your battles, and how to reach some of those goals, how to profile the Engine to make it run faster, all that kind of stuff. So we'll probably have those slides up online. I imagine Oculus will put that up at some point, maybe even videos, I have no idea. But there's some pretty practical advice on profiling performance in Unreal Engine for exactly these kinds of reasons. And finally, what do you see as the ultimate potential for virtual reality and where it could go? Man, a whole new world, basically. I mean, why not build completely other worlds in this experience? Why not have alternate versions of this world? It's really hard to say one thing or another about what it's going to be because it feels like it really could be anything. I feel like I would only be putting my foot in my mouth. It's that misquote, you know, Bill Gates, 64K will be enough. Like, how can you quantify that kind of thing, right? So, I don't know. I think VR is an exciting thing for the future, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. You're welcome.
