Troubleshooting and helpful tips

  • See-through mode may flicker or have degraded tracking performance in certain lighting conditions, especially with LED lights.

  • To improve see-through mode performance, try moving to a room with different lighting or disabling the feature when not in use.

  • Shaders may need adjustments to properly composite transparency over see-through mode content, especially in game engines.

  • The Google VR SDK for Unity provides a material with the blend function pre-configured for optimal see-through mode integration.

  • Utilize the Tone-mapping API to creatively control the color and mood of your see-through experience, compensating for monochrome cameras.

Troubleshooting

Flickering environment

If the environment flickers while see-through mode is enabled, try moving to a room with different lighting conditions. Some LED light sources are known to produce a flickering image.

Degraded tracking performance

If tracking degrades while see-through mode is enabled, try moving to a room with different lighting conditions. Some lighting is known to degrade tracking. LED lighting is especially likely to cause flicker and impact performance. While see-through mode is enabled on the device, even if not in active use, the tracking quality is slightly impacted. Simply disable the see-through mode feature and reboot to return the device to the original state.

Design guidelines

Design guidelines for shaders

  • Game engines don’t typically expect to have to alpha composite correctly over a background and thus sometimes ignore the alpha channel. Because see-through mode is often intended to replace the background, special shaders may be needed to correctly compose transparency over see-through mode content.

  • In Unity, any shader that uses Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha should add the alpha channel blend function to it to composite properly with see-through mode:

    Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha, OneMinusDstAlpha One

  • The Google VR SDK for Unity provides the material GoogleVR > Beta > Materials > GvrSeeThroughUI. This material is a clone of Unity's built-in DefaultUI material with the blend function fixed up for see-through mode.

Design guidelines for tone mapping

  • Most cameras used for see-through mode are almost certainly monochrome. To enable greater creative control over the images use the Tone-mapping API to color cast and tone map the see-through mode images to control the mood of your experience through creative color choices.