VR / AR Support for Google Cardboard, Vive, Oculus and Samsung Gear?

It does not make much sense to limit your VR / AR feature to the Hololense only.

Considering most SU users are on a mac. And other headsets are alot more accessible like the Cardboard, Gear or the future Oculus portable.

Are the any future plans to implement VR features to these units? It could simply be added to the SketchUp viewer for Android and iOS to have a sterio scopic view of a scene with gyroscope movement.

(Or did Microsoft give you an obscene amount for an exclusive?)

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Has this been verified? I am not sure this is factual.

I believe the last statistic I saw indicated that most SketchUp users are working on PCs.

I don’t know if that is true in other industry. But most people I meet inn production design, interior design and architects use Mac software.

So let me rephrase… most professional users who designs 3D plans for physical spaces with costumers who would benefit from a virutal tour… uses a Mac software.

(ironically i use PC and am considers the odd one out.)

Almost everybody who is developing or building for VR/AR is using a PC however. Yes some software can be used on MAC but nothing really of substance.

When it comes to VR/AR you do not (in almost all use cases) send information directly to the hardware, it needs to be compiled into an app or a package and then ran in an engine or stand alone app to view. MAC computers do not have the raw power to render these types of experiences currently.

My workflow involves me using Sketchup for VR but I have to use UE4 as the compiler/engine to run the scene. I also could not run that type of environment on a MAC, they just don’t have the power. Even if you fully spec out a Mac Pro or the new imac Pro it’s still not in the same league as a PC workstation.

Now some render engines can create a fixed position 360 render that allows you using a hardware device to ‘look around’ in all directions but this would not be classed as true VR. I can see perhaps in the future having this function in Sketchup as a fixed render POV but anything with movement would be incredibly difficult running on mobile.

I am also part of the Facebook AR Studio testing group, while I have been running that software on my MAC it’s nothing compared to trying to run a realised 3D VR/AR environment. VR/AR phone dev uses minimal 3D assets and those are then compiled in other engines.

I don’t hold out much hope for MAC based VR/AR development for 3D environments until they vastly update the hardware types used (maybe a new Mac Pro one day, we can dream?).

  1. Not available on MAC, but you can get this app for HTC Vive at least that allows you to open a sketchup model (native SU file support!) and walk around it: AM Model Viewer on Steam

  2. There is also a Sketchup VR plugin for Unity: Sketch Up & Unity 5.5 + SteamVR Plugin (HTC Vive) - YouTube

Just to add - if all you want to do is make a fixed point 360 view from a Sketchup file there are many ways to do this currently using many software combinations including native Sketchup 2D image export + 3rd party photo stitch software.

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The point here is $3000 Hololense…it doesn’t matter is for PC or MAC.

exporting the model to Unreal or Unity from the design process don’t make sense … I would prefer use Enscape and see my design, make changes and see all the changes right away without exporting but SU should be VR out of the box with any type of glasses

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Yes I agree it would be great to have native VR support but it’s much harder to implement and I don’t really see how they are going to fit it in well (remember you need to be running the scene at 90Hz or more)

I would rather have ‘good’ VR rather than native VR that is not well implemented. Hololens is completely different than Gear VR, Oculus and Vive in how content is produced and displayed.

What is your idea of Sketchup VR, what would you use it for and to what end? There is a limit on how good the viewer is going to be if it’s developed in house, that’s why of course the design process makes sense to use a well developed engine like Unreal or Unity. If you just want to walk around the model (which you could not do on mobile VR anyway as it’s not powerful enough) you can use AM Model viewer for Sketchup but that is PC only.

Also it’s common that it’s not a case of Microsoft paying for an exclusive but Microsoft paying and doing all of the development itself in order to have content on a Microsoft device. Was always the case with them when I worked with them for 6 years on the original surface line and mobile phones.

I design houses and I thought to go from the traditional design process to sketchup was a huge jump in quality… walk around, intuitive, etc…I got my license of Enscape and Oculus Rift and now walking the house, feeling the space is another level of what you can do when you are designing…to me is another tool to really improve what you produce. The quality of enscape is very good but I still use 3ds max+vray for high quality stills.
I would like native support for VR glasses and modeling everything like I’m inside my projects.

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Aha yes I see now what you mean. I doubt SU will ever support it but we can still hope.

I have been looking for something similar to what you describe but have not been able to find it so far. I think there are a couple of choices on the Occulus compared to the HTC.

If you have access to a rift try out Oculus Medium or Gravity Sketch!

Here are some examples : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lQyaG

How well does enscape run on a MAC, what’s the largest scene you have tested?

I just checked and they don’t have a version for MAC…so only windows

Haha typical of web marketing these days, using a MAC as a template to make the landing page look cooler!

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Some views…this is medium quality real-time

Not bad, I will download the trial after Christmas and give it a spin.

Sketchup is incredibly well positioned to allow a designer to actually edit and design the project while in the VR space.

At the moment VR isn’t used much by designers because it’s basically limited to running presentations. The renderers and game engines (like Stingray, Lumion, Unity etc) can import models but can’t allow useful editing of the working model. Only with a bit of mucking around & setup time we can show clients simple variations of materials etc, but that’s a bit lame after the first 30 seconds of “wow it’s in VR”. It would be incredible to run sketchup scenes, layers and design with my team inside the 3d space with the full toolset.

Old thread:

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I read through that old thread Sam but it seems there was no current solution, just more requests?

There is LightUp that renders inside SketchUp. Now the SketchUp interface should just be made to support VR…

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Kubity is almost everything i wanted from a sketcup to VR in Sketcup viewer. Only thing missing is a stereoscopic 3D depth image. (It only duplicates same image to both eyes). Just copy what they are doing at export 2 images and your good.

And yes, it works with ALL VR devices from (Cardboard, GearVR, oculus, etc.). Not just MS Hololence.

So the argument that it can’t be done is nulled by this example.

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Will have to check it out!

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