Unreal Engine 5 - Develop and install Virtual Reality App for the Oculus/Meta Quest (2) (engl. Text)
The Unreal Engine (5) makes it possible to develop applications for virtual reality glasses. To bring these to mobile glasses that are no longer connected to the PC in any way, the Unreal project must be distributed as an Android application.
This tutorial shows all the steps necessary to do this. In the course we will install Android Studio and Visual Studio, configure Unreal and put the Quest (2) into developer mode to install the app on it.
I worked here with Unreal Engine 5 and the Meta/Oculus Quest 2. In principle, however, the tutorial should also work for older versions, only possibly slightly modified.
I'm sure there are a few components that I install unnecessarily or one or the other setting doesn't make much sense. It works in any case (in the current version), but if you have any tips on how to optimise the process, please post them in the comments.
00:01:45 Installing the Oculus app and activating the developer mode in our quest.
00:03:55 Installing the latest version of Android Studio https://developer.android.com/studio
00:04:45 Starting the SDK Manager of Android Studio.
In the setup file of our engine, e.g. C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.0\Engine\Extras\Android\SetupAndroid.bat you will find the version numbers of Buildtools, CMAKE and NDK, which we have to install in the SDK Manager.
In addition, the AndroidBuild of our glasses, in my case Android 10, API 29 and Android SDK Command-line Tools as well as Google USB Driver.
00:06:56 Install Visual Studio Community Edition https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/de...
We install the workloads .NET Desktop Development, Desktop Development with C++, Mobile Development with C++ and Game Development with C++ as well as the components NET 6.0 Runtime, NET Core 3.1 Runtime and maybe NET 5.0 Runtime, although this is already outdated. Restart the PC.
00:08:18 Start Windows Power Shell and copy and execute the following line: New-Item ~\.android\repositories.cfg -Force
00:08:43 Open SetupAndroid.bat from above in the editor and search for SDKMANAGER=%STUDIO_SDK_PATH%\tools\bin\sdkmanager.bat
and replace it with
SDKMANAGER=%STUDIO_SDK_PATH%\cmdline-tools\latest\bin\sdkmanager.bat
replace it.
00:09:45 Run SetupAndroid.bat, hopefully without error message.
00:10:19 Run UpdateLinker.bat in the same folder.
00:10:46 Check Windows system environment variables, Android_Home, Java_Home, NDK_Root and NDKRoot should be present and correct. Reboot the computer.
00:11:25 Start Unreal Engine and create VR project.
00:11:45 Edit project settings, under Platforms/Android: Target SDK Version 29 (I'm not sure if this makes sense, but it works). Click on Configure Now in the red bar at the bottom.
00:12:38 Under Platforms/Android SDK, enter the correct paths, to the SDK, to the specific NDK, to the Android JDK. Below that, matchndk and in the last line android-21.
00:13:45 Save and build the app: Platforms / Android / Package Project: select folder and wait a long time (only takes so long the first time you calculate).
00:14:50 Connect the glasses to the PC via USB, both confirm the data exchange and permanently allow the PC to modify programmes in the glasses via USB (USB debugging).
Type adb devices in the Windows command line and check whether the glasses are displayed.
Start Install_Projectname-arm64.bat from the finished app folder. The app is installed and can now be found in the library in the Unknown Sources category.
00:16:45 Extra tip on installing particularly large apps with an obb that does not seem to be installed: during the installation, start the core app that is already installed and then the obb can also be installed.
00:18:15 Extra tip on installing via the wireless AirLink connection: assuming a good WLAN (5GHz) directly on the PC, you can also transfer apps wirelessly. Connect the USB cable and execute 'adb tcpip 5555' in the command line. Remove the cable and then execute 'adb connect ###.###.###.###' (IP with which the glasses are in the WLAN, to be found in the WLAN settings of the glasses). Works until the next restart.
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