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[Developer Interview] Firewall Ultra uses Unreal Engine 5 to evolve the VR shooter franchise on PlayStation®VR2

Kalentan

Kalentan

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Oct 25, 2017
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www.unrealengine.com

Firewall Ultra uses Unreal Engine 5 to evolve the VR shooter franchise on PlayStation®VR2

First Contact Entertainment talks about using PlayStation®VR2 and Unreal Engine 5 to craft its evolved squad-based shooter, Firewall Ultra.
www.unrealengine.com www.unrealengine.com

Firewall Zero Hour was a pioneer of modern VR gaming. How does Firewall Ultra raise the bar?

First Contact Entertainment: Firewall Ultra is truly a next-gen VR title made possible by a combination of the hardware of the PS VR2 and Unreal Engine 5. The entire visual approach has been re-tooled with a focus on detailed, real-time lighting and all of the gameplay has been extensively refined to take advantage of the PS VR2 hardware. For example, there is extensive use of eye-tracking in the game, sometimes in subtle ways to add detail and control to key interactions.
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Can you talk about how Firewall Ultra will make use of the PlayStation VR2's new eye-tracking capabilities?

First Contact Entertainment: We've already shown a couple of examples in Sony's Innovation Stories. There is the weapon select wheel, which is a UI element that allows you to switch weapons by looking at them and the mechanic for aiming grenade throws. Those are really the tip of the iceberg as the entire experience has been designed to leverage eye-tracking in subtle, but helpful ways. From the menus, to some of the detailed nuances of our aiming mechanics, players can harness the immediacy of "looking" to solve gameplay interactions.

We're very excited by the potential to use eye-tracking in non-obvious ways, ways that just make something that is inherently difficult without other physical feedback and make it feel "natural" in a VR environment. This technology is going to pay huge dividends for not only Firewall Ultra, but all of our future projects as well—such as Solaris Offworld Combat II, which we just teased!
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Does Firewall Ultra offer any ray tracing support?

First Contact Entertainment: That's a great question. There is considerable real-time lighting in Ultra and that's been an explicit focus for us. The combination of PS VR2 and PS5 has opened up much more potential for sophisticated lighting and shading.

I'm just going to say that wielding a true, real-time, shadow-casting flashlight in VR is an incredibly powerful and immersive tool.
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Firewall Ultra runs at 60FPS on the PlayStation VR2. How did the team tackle optimization to hit a consistent and smooth framerate?

First Contact Entertainment: The short version is being ruthless! In all seriousness, we never choose the easy path. When others do single-player, we do multiplayer. For us, multiplayer is a significantly different experience in VR. The social immersion feels very real. When other people do floating hands, we do full body representation, when others do teleporting, we do full locomotion. (This was a thing with the OG Firewall).

There are a lot of well-documented optimization strategies and the real rule is don't draw or calculate anything you don't need to. As with early console gaming, take account of every asset and every cycle. Don't spend what you don't need.

That's a bit of gross simplification, we also work hard to determine which techniques contribute to the players experience more than others and play a lot of "tricks" with what you see.
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Were there any Unreal Engine tools or features that were helpful in developing Firewall Ultra?

First Contact Entertainment: OK, this isn't obvious from a VR perspective, but we've been using Environment Query System (EQS) extensively in our PvE mode; it's allowed us to craft an almost endless variety of encounters with a highly efficient scenario set up.


Our PvE mode has been re-built, extended, refined, polished and all of that in comparison to Firewall Zero Hour!
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There is a lot more in there, like simply too much and a lot it is technical stuff rather than going deep into gameplay or anything, but we do seemingly get confirmation that Firewall Ultra will be following games like Horizon, GT7 and so on that use Reprojection since they mention 60 FPS. I wouldn't mind if some games gave the option for native 90 FPS (or even 120 FPS) at lower fidelty or 60 FPS w/ Reprojection for higher fidelity.
 
Xeonidus

Xeonidus

“Fuck them kids.”
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Oct 28, 2017
4,605
Really cool to see UE5 being used for VR. They must be one of the first? Great stuff coming from different teams using UE5!
 
wafflebrain

wafflebrain

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,466
lol at this part:

Does Firewall Ultra offer any ray tracing support?

First Contact Entertainment: That's a great question.
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Translation: Are you high?!

I'm not saying its impossible depending on the game, but VR overhead at PS VR2's spec is already demanding AF as is, thinking RT is an option is a bit silly.

Anyways this looks like it'll be a great re-release for the platform. Later gen UE5 games built for VR will be a sight to see.
 
DieH@rd

DieH@rd

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Oct 26, 2017
11,412
This is UE5, but who knows when [or if] we will get VR game that uses Lumen and Nanite.
 
joeblow

joeblow

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Oct 27, 2017
3,186
Laker Nation
Wow, I'm intrigued. Can't wait to see some footage.

In fact, one unique marketing idea would be for Sony to start releasing real-time PSVR2 trailers of gameplay sequences that can only be viewed on the headset (basically a replay or two). It would be easier to show off the VR benefits to the target audience in advance that way.
 
Pottuvoi

Pottuvoi

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Oct 28, 2017
3,131
Kalentan said:
Yeah, various VR games like Horizon, GT7, and I think also RE8, run at 60 but use reprojection to display at 90/120 FPS. It's not perfect and in some examples it can add a ghosting effect but it's overall pretty good.
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Yup, 120fps output when using 60fps.
Ghosting effect is due to object being displayed twice in same location and head position changing.

A proper timewarp or frame doubling with moving objects would be awesome in comparison.
 
RagingAvatar

RagingAvatar

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Oct 25, 2017
799
Manchester
Kalentan said:
Yeah, various VR games like Horizon, GT7, and I think also RE8, run at 60 but use reprojection to display at 90/120 FPS. It's not perfect and in some examples it can add a ghosting effect but it's overall pretty good.
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Ah okay, thanks for clarifying. I thought it wasn't using reprojection for a moment and was like "WHAT!!?"
I'm sure this'll be fine then.
Looking forward to it, snippets I've seen look ace.
 

Deleted member 110398

Mar 9, 2022
3,598
Call of the Mountain also uses UE5 IIRC.
 
arsene_P5

arsene_P5

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Apr 17, 2020
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BRVR said:
Call of the Mountain also uses UE5 IIRC.
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The game does use unreal and the developers talked about it in the interview I linked. I don't know if they use UE4 or UE5. Wikipedia isn't the best source, but according to the article on there it's UE4.

www.unrealengine.com

How 'Horizon Call of the Mountain' leverages PS VR2 to deliver next-gen virtual reality

Guerrilla Studio Director and Studio Art Director Jan-Bart van Beek talks about the development behind the VR game 'Horizon Call of the Mountain.'
www.unrealengine.com www.unrealengine.com
 
jsnepo

jsnepo

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
4,648
So this is a different game huh? No upgrade from the PSVR version?

I'm going to miss the Aim controller.
 

Deleted member 110398

Mar 9, 2022
3,598
arsene_P5 said:
The game does use unreal and the developers talked about it in the interview I linked. I don't know if they use UE4 or UE5. Wikipedia isn't the best source, but according to the article on there it's UE4.

www.unrealengine.com

How 'Horizon Call of the Mountain' leverages PS VR2 to deliver next-gen virtual reality

Guerrilla Studio Director and Studio Art Director Jan-Bart van Beek talks about the development behind the VR game 'Horizon Call of the Mountain.'
www.unrealengine.com www.unrealengine.com
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Kalentan said:
It's UE4.
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Ah i see interesting. I wonder why they didn't use Decima, I guess since Firesprite were the lead devs on this UE4 was probably more familiar/easier to work with.
 
Cats_Schrodinger

Cats_Schrodinger

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,489
Pottuvoi said:
Yup, 120fps output when using 60fps.
Ghosting effect is due to object being displayed twice in same location and head position changing.

A proper timewarp or frame doubling with moving objects would be awesome in comparison.
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They should have something like that. Especially with control over the full software stack.

What they need is something like AppSW from Oculus, which is basically timewarp (although with Z-buffer data), which by all means Sony has with spacewarp with depth and motion vector information.

Right now it's just bad. Horizon is very badly hit by the artifacts and it's rather jarring. On GT7 it's all right since you are looking forward most of the time.
 
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