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Autodesk Stingray - Experience?
Hello everyone,
i found that Autodesks Stringray engine has a HoloLens namespace.
http://help.autodesk.com/view/Stingray/ENU/?guid=__lua_ref_ns_stingray_Hololens_html
Does anyone have experience with Stingray and/or developing for the HoloLens with Stingray?
We personally have some annoying problems with Unity so an alternative would be appreciated. And since Unreal Engine doesn't provide support for UWP, you can't develop for the HoloLens with it.
Best Regards
Best Answer
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DeadTaco
✭
The company I work for has been using Stingray for VR development for quite a while now. I haven't used it for Hololens, but have used it quite a bit for an HTC Vive. I can say that Stingray has a bunch of pros and cons.
The Pros are:
- Ease of use
- Node-based visual scripting, for new programmers or if you don't know how to code
- Uses LUA for the non-visual scripting, which is very powerful
- Excellent lightmap and light baking built straight into the engine
- A node-based visual shader editor
- Compile straight to Xbox, PS4, iOS, Android, HTML5, PC, or Mac with a single button push.
- Directly integrated into SteamVR for instant access to VR capability with very little to no VR knowledge needed. The VR portion is ready to go "out of the box".
- Constantly being updated with new features and bug fixes
- Integrates directly with Maya LT or 3ds Max, for instant model changes, animation changes, etc. that are shown immediately in the game engine.
- You usually get pretty good answers on the forums from the Stingray developers, but usually takes 24 hours or more for a reply.
Now the cons...
- A very niche community with very little sample code and resources
- On the forums, usually 24 hours to get a question answered, or sometimes not at all. On the Unity forums, it seemed like I'd get answers within minutes.
- So far, from what I've been seeing, most Stingray users are architectural or construction firms that want quick access to real-time rendering for their projects, like walking around a job site in VR. This is why 3ds Max 2018 is going to have a version of Stingray baked into it for quick VR architectural presentations.
- The engine is still very young, and things you would think would work will not work. For example, right now you can't really make a game with transparent water + particles, because water hides the particles even when the particles are over the water. I.e. water splashes, smoke, dust -- no can do. Actually, ALL transparent surfaces suffer this problem.
- Finding resources online for Stingray are almost impossible since it has such a small community
- A bit buggy at times, although every time I find a bug and I mention it on the forums, the next Stingray version will usually have fixed the issue per my comments. The downside is that if you have a deadline and a bug is blocking your progression, you're stuck until they fix it. This is the same with other engines, but Stingray is very new and bugs occur a bit more often.
- Real-time shadows start to glitch on large levels. By large, I mean 2km square.
- Very limited for dynamic mesh creation. It can do it, but it's complicated. Therefore, making a game with dynamic terrain is incredibly difficult if not impossible.
- All resources are pretty heavy and use a "unit" type for everything. This means making a game such as Minecraft is impossible, since each terrain block would be a memory/processor intensive "unit" that would kill your system after a few thousand blocks are generated, since each unit has its own code to process with everything else.
- No free version.
In conclusion, for architectural walkthroughs and general real-time rendering, Stingray is king. Its light baking capabilities are simply amazing. However, If you wanted to make an advanced game like Skyrim, it's not going to happen. At least not as it currently stands at the time I'm writing this.
Admittedly, I haven't fully immersed myself in Stingray for all of my projects, but have been using it for about a year now. The list above is just from my experiences.
-DT
(I'm lazy and didn't check any of the above for typos, so excuse them if you see them)
3
Answers
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The company I work for has been using Stingray for VR development for quite a while now. I haven't used it for Hololens, but have used it quite a bit for an HTC Vive. I can say that Stingray has a bunch of pros and cons.
The Pros are:
Now the cons...
In conclusion, for architectural walkthroughs and general real-time rendering, Stingray is king. Its light baking capabilities are simply amazing. However, If you wanted to make an advanced game like Skyrim, it's not going to happen. At least not as it currently stands at the time I'm writing this.
Admittedly, I haven't fully immersed myself in Stingray for all of my projects, but have been using it for about a year now. The list above is just from my experiences.
-DT
(I'm lazy and didn't check any of the above for typos, so excuse them if you see them)
Thank you for this detailed answer. This helped a lot.