Is Offline Possible with Game Engines and VR?

NotAnArtist

Hi! I have some questions that I'm embarrassed I can't answer myself. I mostly need a quick idea of what's possible:

Working offline - I can't figure out if it is possible with Unity, Unreal, and various VR systems.
Are Unity & Unreal only useable online, similar to, I guess, Steam's resources? We upload our props to their servers and use their engines to manipulate them?
Or can they be installed totally on our machines without need of internet?

Regarding VR:
-Oculus Quest 2 requires signing into Facebook. Heck no!
-HP Reverb G2 has "compatibility across both SteamVR and Windows Mixed Reality". Apparently those also require an internet connection.
-Valve Index, "only $999" at Steam, says you only need a computer, space, headset, input, tracking and a head!
 So, no online connection necessary?

I'm asking because:

-I only go online with Linux, so porting props from DS would be awkward. Really hoping to do animations - and Filament for me so far is a whole new ugly (iray spoiled me).

-I'll soon need to avoid being online too much since I am about to cut my internet service down to a bare minimum level.

-I have enough $$ saved for a VR system to go with Unity or Unreal.
Maybe also do exercises as was done with the old Wii.
Maybe watch 3D blu-ray movies which, if my old 3D-capable monitor goes bad, would become impossible.
(I'm hoping it's true that 3D movies are viewable in VR)...

Those are enough reasons to invest the time and money. It's just hard to swim through the available info without the insight that you folks have. Therefor, many thanks for whatever direction you can offer!

Mada

You can work in Unity offline, and use the VR headset as a camera, but it uses SteamVR. To walk around in VR you need to install some assets - there is a learning curve. You also need to connect to the unity store if you want to download assets.

Index is amazing and use SteamVR - not sure if you can use that without internet since you have to be logged in to start up steam

3D movies are viewable in VR as 3D... but not sure how blu-ray would work. You can watch 3D movies at https://www.bigscreenvr.com/ - needs internet connection.

Internet connection is very much an integral part of anything VR. :)

NotAnArtist

Thank you, Mada. So nice of you to respond!
This will help me to search with a better idea of where to aim. I've been all over the place up to now, always walking away feeling I've learned nothing that related to my needs.

Don't remember 'Index', which proves I've been doing something wrong... though it's probably here in this mess of notes!

Yeah, I have a good stock of blu-ray movies for Nvidia 3D Vision. Nvidia stopped supporting it, though, and the special monitors aren't made anymore. So I've hoped to find an alternative way to view them.
Being online is just wrong for me, I like my private eves with private entertainment, everything else shut down. Weird how people accept having several outside parties involved so much in their lives... constantly.
...Someday it will come back to bite them;-)

I will concentrate on Unity and see how working offline might function in terms of animating my characters and props. Probably over my head in all this, but at least I know there's possibility.

OK, thanks again, Mada. Time for me to re-group!
Cheers,
Ken

Artini

Thank you, Mada, for the excellent explanation.

I have very little experience with VR at the moment, but 'Index' looks very promising.

I am also a bit worry to be all the time on the Internet, but I could not sacrifice my usage of Unity, Daz Studio and so on.

Internet is a very important part of my life and I have no other option at the moment.

It has been talking, that the vegetation (trees) has very advanced communication via their root system and such,

so maybe in the future we will get completely green kind of Internet - we could call it TreeNet.

But what about the trees feellings? I am not so sure, if they will accept our usage of their vital parts...

NotAnArtist

TreeNet! I love that!
It's true! They communicate through micro-organisms in the soil. So I can see us plugging an ethernet cable into a tap on a tree and listening in.
My concerns about being online all the time, though, relate to a loss of independence and privacy. It's a huge subject...
Meanwhile, I do care about trees' feelings. Which is why I don't want to have to explain to them why so much of what I own uses their body parts.

Artini

NotAnArtist said:

TreeNet! I love that!
It's true! They communicate through micro-organisms in the soil. So I can see us plugging an ethernet cable into a tap on a tree and listening in.
My concerns about being online all the time, though, relate to a loss of independence and privacy. It's a huge subject...
Meanwhile, I do care about trees' feelings. Which is why I don't want to have to explain to them why so much of what I own uses their body parts.

 I have the same concerns, but no solution to that, so I will be using Internet as long as I can.

 

 

Artini

I have just consulted with the 'Index' user and professional Unity developer, that it is all possible to use offline.

There is a Steam offline client for using 'Index'.

If you download all necessary packages from Unity Asset store, then you can also use Unity offline.

The same is also true for Daz Studio - just download everything you need via DIM.

 

NotAnArtist

Thank you Artini!! Great news!
You knew exactly where to go for answers. Or more exactly, what to ask...
So like Mada mentioned, there is a learning curve, but that's fine when you can be more certain that you're studying the correct things.
Thanks again, Mada and Artini!