Intermediate XR in Unreal 5.8

About this session

Past the template: standalone versus PCVR rendering, baked lighting versus Lumen, passthrough, locomotion, and the optimization habits that keep an XR build comfortable.

What we covered

This session demonstrated XR development workflows and optimization techniques in Unreal Engine 5.8. Alex Coulombe compared standalone and PCVR rendering pipelines across scenes utilizing baked lighting, Lumen, and Nanite. The class also covered OpenXR pass-through setup, shader complexity troubleshooting, and custom locomotion implementations.

1. 01Configuring Unreal Engine and Android SDK environments for XR packaging using setup scripts.
2. 02Comparing performance targets across standalone baked, desktop low baked, and desktop high Lumen map configurations.
3. 03Managing static, stationary, and movable lighting behavior, lightmap density, and volumetric lightmap probes.
4. 04Adjusting post-process volume overrides for screen space reflections, Lumen ray tracing, and convolution bloom.
5. 05Inspecting shader instruction counts across unlit, opaque, masked, and complex translucent materials.
6. 06Configuring and debugging native and OpenXR pass-through implementations for standalone and PCVR.
7. 07Setting up HDRI backdrops with camera projection and aligning directional sun lighting.
8. 08Examining VR locomotion mechanics including dash teleport, flying, comfort vignettes, and world scaling.
9. 09Applying performance optimizations using actor merging, cull distance volumes, and VR pixel density adjustments.

AI summary of the session recording's transcript — the recording itself is the source of truth.

Your instructor

Alex Coulombe

Epic Games Authorized Instructor

Runs Manhattan's first Unreal Authorized Training Center and has spent ten years shipping real-time XR for architecture, live theater, and brands — now mostly on Apple Vision Pro, Quest, and AI-driven pipelines.

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