🎥Using the Unreal Engine Plugin

Adding a Looking Glass Capture

There are two ways to add a Looking Glass Capture to your scene. You can use a Looking Glass Capture Actor, or a Looking Glass Capture Component. The Looking Glass Capture Component allows you to add the Looking Glass Capture Component to any existing actor, including pawns & characters. To add a Looking Glass Capture Actor to your scene click the cube with the green + and then choose "All Classes" and scroll down until you see Looking Glass Capture.

After Adding the Looking Glass Capture to your scene, click the Looking Glass Button on the toolbar next to "platforms". If you have a Looking Glass connected, you should see your scene in the Looking Glass! The Looking Glass Capture will automatically adjust the aspect ratio and settings based on the Looking Glass device you have connected.

Capture Settings

The following settings are shared between both the Looking Glass Capture Actor and Looking Glass Capture Component. The Looking Glass Capture Component is meant to be used inside of a blueprint like a pawn, character or actor, while the Looking Glass Capture Actor is meant to be placed directly in the level.

You can find the settings on the right-hand side in the details panel when you have the Looking Glass Capture selected. The main settings here you'll want to keep in mind are Size and FOV.

Size

Editing the Size variable changes the size of the Looking Glass Capture, this is useful when you want to change the scale at which the Looking Glass Capture can focus on.

Field of View (FOV)

Editing the field of view changes the amount of the scene visible by the Looking Glass Capture. Note, however, that the default of 14 degrees is intended to ensure that the scene's parallax closely matches real-world parallax. Changing the field of view doesn't break the effect, but it does add some distortion.

Depth of Field Adjustment

You can override the depth of field set by the post processing volume by enabling the "override DOF" flag in the Post Processing settings of the Looking Glass Capture, however this will also adjust how the camera responds to light depending on your project settings, so keep that in mind as you adjust it.

Multi-View Mode

By default, we render in what we call "Single View Mode" meaning each view is captured in a single pass. If you untoggle this setting, the plugin will render multiple views in a single pass. This can improve performance, however many advanced rendering features will no longer work, like ray tracing, Nanite, and Lumen.

Near and Far Clip

The near and far clip planes allow you to control how much of the world is visible to the Looking Glass Capture. This can be especially useful if you want to keep areas that are too far away or too close to the camera from being shown on your Looking Glass.

Gotchas

Real-Time is Not Fully Supported

While the plugin can be configured to run in real-time, by default, it will not do so because the frame rate is lower than acceptable levels. To set it up to run in real-time you can select "Realtime Mode" under the "Performance Mode" section in the dropdown beside the Looking Glass button.

Using Nanite

Unreal Engine 5 currently doesn't support Multiview content with Nanite, in order to use Nanite with the Unreal Plugin you'll need to enable single view mode on your Looking Glass Capture actor/component. This mode is enabled by default, but if you turn it off, you will need to re-enable it.

Turn off Lens Flare

Lens flare effects are screen based and don't translate well to holographic contexts. We recommend turning the lens flare effect off.

We'd love to hear your suggestions 💜

If you're having issues with our Unreal Engine Plugin, please email us at [email protected].