Shadows Appear Differently in Blueprint Virtual Reality Project

Hi all,

I’ve setup a new Virtual Reality blueprint project (which works awesome right out of the box, by the way) and I’m having an issue with shadows/lighting. After much digging, my issue appears to be something to do with the project type itself. I setup the exact same scene in a new blank blueprint project, and the issue does not occur. Both projects have the same exact post proc settings, and light source settings. I even copied over the rendering portion of the project settings from the blank project to the VR project. Is this a bug, a setting that can’t be changed in VR blueprint projects, or am I still overlooking some settings somewhere? Thanks for you help!

Here’s the shadows from a blank project (the desired look)

And here’s the shadows from our VR project (what needs fixing)

Hello iamshaneihaveaface,

When you say that you this only occurs in your VR project, did you create that project from the VR template?

Yes, I did. I created a workaround for this by creating a new blank project, and then just copying all the assets/blueprints from my VR template project. Although the issue is basically resolved for me, I’m still curious as to what the cause of the original problem was in the VR template project.

With the information provided I believe this is working as intended. It appears that the issue deals with ambient occlusion. This is what you are seeing with the shadows in the rafters. However, “r.AmbientOcclusionLevels” is set to zero in for the VR template. This can be found in the Default engine ini. I have provided a link to the documentation below. I hope that this information helps.

Link: XR Best Practices in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.1 Documentation

Make it a great day

Thanks Rudy! That was definitely what I needed!