At Oculus have made three changes, which greatly speeds up the iteration process for developers who are creating apps Quest with Unity.
Because Quest is a standalone headset to test how the app will work on your computer, you must package the application and then deploy it on the headset before you test it. Because this process can take several minutes from the moment you start packing to the moment when you see the app in the headset, testing small changes is very time consuming. Iteration — how quickly you can make changes and then to see them — is a key factor in effective creation of any carrier. For developers who are creating applications Quest, the faster the time between making changes and testing them, the more time they can spend on honing and improving their apps.
Oculus says that for a long time of iteration when building for the Quest is the main issue raised by the developers. The company introduced three improvements to the iteration of the Quest in Unity, which can greatly reduce the time of iteration. Two of the three changes is available in Unity 2018.1 and later, although one is required 2018.2 or later.
OVR Build APK and Run
The first is “OVR APK Build and Run” command that uses a cache to speed up the process of packaging application. Oculus says this method produces the same APK which is obtained from the normal Unity Build and Run, but he does it for 10-50% faster.
OVR Quick Scene Preview
The second is “Quick view scene OVR”, which automatically divides the projects into several resource packs and downloads them in the Quest. After making changes to the app and use the command in the headset, you must download only the packages that contain the changes.
Oculus has tested preliminary preview Scene Quick Preview OVR with three published apps Quest — Beat Sabre , Dead and Buried 2 and Superhot VR and found that it significantly reduces the iteration time by more than 80% for each application.
Shader Stripping
The last change is that the Oculus Shader calls Stripping (requires Unity 2018.2 or newer) that can speed up the process “OVR APK Build and Run” and “OVR Quick Preview of the Scene”. According to Oculus, Unity application running on Quest, download only shaders Tier2, which means that spend time on packaging a Shader at any level is a waste of time.
Oculus also proposed an explanation of when developers should use the “OVR APK Build and Run” or “OVR Quick Scene Preview”:
OVR Quick Preview of the Scene designed for rapid iteration of the scenes and resources and does not create an APK that represent your final project. When you are developing your project, OVR Quick Preview of the Scene useful to reduce the time of iteration. When you are close to the sending or want to see how it will look and work on your final project, use OVR Build APK and Run. And OVR Build APK and Run, and OVR Quick Scene Preview has a built in development mode and should not be used to create a final package to send.
For more information on the Oculus tells developers in its documentation for developers, which has been updated with these new improvements iteration.
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