Mentorship Summary (Recurring Issues Across XR Hacks)

Colocation/Shared anchors:

Issue: Building block that promises easy shared anchors setup, but doesn't work out of the box.
Possible Solution: Suggest that participants do colocation ONLY if they have prior experience with it, or if the have an experienced team member (+3 years experience).

Networked Avatars

Issue: Complexities in authentication steps for data sharing.
Possible Solution: Suggest that participants do colocation ONLY if they have prior experience with it, or if the have an experienced team member (+3 years experience).

Head Tracking

Issue: Complexities in tracking certain body parts or losing visual when wearing the headset.
Possible Solution: Highlighting the Meta settings under Project Settings in Unity (or suggesting to regularly view it). Since auto applying fixes suggested in this tab usually fixes most of the issues related to tracking.

Unstable Gesture Detection

Issue: Complexities during the setup of certain gestures.
Possible Solution: Building Blocks should provide more customization options during gesture creation process. Maybe an option to separate a gesture related to UI interaction from one related to in-game mechanics.

Voice SDK/Wit.ai Setup Issues

Issue: In Istanbul, several team members and mentors had issues signing into wit.ai using their Meta account. When they tried to sign in, it would take them to a page saying "Continue as <person name>", but clicking it would take them back to the "Sign in with Meta account" page.

Workaround: Some mentors were able to proceed to their wit.ai page with their Meta account, and let the teams use their own wit.ai API key for the hackathon.

Quest Link Setup Issues

Issues: Many teams weren't familiar with some of the hidden developer features in Quest Link such as passthrough support, hand tracking support etc.

Most teams didn't know that there's a separate "Active OpenXR Runtime" setting under the Quest Link settings that can break or fix Link in Unity depending on the situation.

Possible Solution: It might be beneficial to suggest setting the active OpenXR runtime to Meta's OpenXR runtime during hackathons, or in some parts of the Project Setup tool in the Meta plugin in Unity.

Unreal Android Build Setup for Quest

Issue: There is no official Meta documentation on what version Android SDK/NDK to install to be able to build successful apks for the Quest using Unreal.

We had to refer teams to various unofficial blog posts talking about specific Unreal versions and which versions of Android Studio, Android SDK, NDK etc. to install, and what project settings to use for Android builds (such as minimum and target SDK version, etc).

Solution: Meta created documentation on what versions of the relevant Android build tools to use depending on the engine version used, such as UE4.27 vs UE 5.3 vs UE 5.4, would go a long way in making this process simpler.

There could also be a "Project Setup" section similar to Unity's Meta plugin that could check the versions of the build tools used, and automatically update the relevant project settings based on where the user has their build tools installed.

Quest Link Passthrough Distortion

Issue: During testing, passthrough running on Quest Link seemed to have a weird camera distortion in the bottom part of the screen while playing a scene in Unity. The distortion got better over time upon repeated runs of the scene, and eventually seemed to go away.

Building Blocks UI Interaction Blocks (Pokeable, Grabbable etc)

Issue: The blocks work out of the box, however don't contain the Unity Event Wrapper components necessary for developers if they want to trigger custom logic on event state changes such as hover or select. https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/unity/unity-isdk-event-wrappers/

This was a huge issue we also saw at MIT Reality Hack this year, as building blocks are typically used by beginners, and they're not familiar with all the Interaction SDK components.

In many cases they don't realize that the Event Wrapper component exists and that they can use that to easily hook into these interaction events with ray interactions, grab interactions etc.

Solution: These building blocks could come with the relevant Event Wrapper script attached to the object as an example that shows how to hook into the various Interaction SDK state change events such as Select, Hover, Unselect etc.

Logitech MX Ink Compatibility Confusion

Issue: Teams weren't sure about whether the stylus was compatible with another controller connected alongside it, or whether hand tracking was supported in combination. If this was more clear from the start, it would've saved some teams time during the ideation process.

Another issue was that we found out Quest OS v69 was recommended to be used with the stylus in draw mode, however this wasn't clear from the start. Many teams weren't familiar with how to update their OS to the public test channel version, so the mentors had to show them.

Logitech MX Ink Connectivity Issues

Issue: MX Ink setup issues.
Possible Solution: Provide a detailed tutorial related to MX Ink setup, specifically for Quest3. Keep in mind that most hackers used MX Ink for the first time during hackathons.

What worked well?

Hand tracking, full body tracking, buildig blocks, passthrough, spatial anchors.

Common Pitfalls

While developing a multiplayer experience, it is not good practice to develop it as singleplayer and then add Multiplayer features. These things should go hand to hand.