A minimalistic intuitive visual IN-GAME utility for keeping track of Cord Wrapping/Tangling in SteamVR.
To use this utility, download the 'latest' release from here, extract from the .zip file, and run TurnSignal.exe!
After launching the program, feel free to minimize the black-box window.
The settings menu should be included in your SteamVR Dashboard as an Overlay, and the utility itself should be projected onto the floor of your environment.
The settings menu includes a toggle to enable/disable the tool, an opacity setting, a scale setting, a setting for manipulating the twist speed (max turns), a toggle to auto-start with windows, a toggle to hide the main unity window, and a button to reset rotation. All settings are saved between app sessions, and shouldn't need to be set every time its launched.
As a feature, the utility will still track rotations whenever running (if steamVR is running), even when its toggled off from the dashboard menu, so if/when its turned back on, it will still show turns as if was left on.
-- Note -- The ammount of rotation on the floor is actually measured from 0 - 10 (now user set Max) turns in either direction, and given as a 0.0 - 1.0 floating point, with 10 turns used as 'max', but it can exceed this without problem, resulting in 'fun' floor shapes that have higher then 1.0 twist values. Just an FYI.
I had the idea for the utility (which originally used large arrows and a counter in the center, but That was Terrible) after playing, and watching people play, GORN on my HMD.
Every time, when action got intense, the cord would inevitably get wrapped up and tangled, and get caught on legs, the controller, the like.
I figured it couldn't hurt to have a visual, in-game tool, to subtly alert you to your ammount of turns, without pausing to dashboard. It was also a very simple idea, with a very fixed feature set to complete it, so why not, eh?
Now this was a minor chunk of a task, but after messing around with the provided overlays in the SteamVR plugin, finding out Unity only sends the 'Scene' App type to OpenVR, further finding out others who use unity for overlays mitigate this issue by using older Unity Versions;
I finally just went ahead and spun my own OpenVR Handler that initializes SteamVR, handles getting HMD/Left/Right controller positions and input, and outputting 2D texures as overlays in relation to Unity Worldspace.
I Built the OpenVR_Overlay_Handler to be generic, and be used in arbitrary projects.
It technically relies on 'having' the SteamVR plugin in a project, but requires you 100% disable the built in SteamVR/UnityVR stuff, as having both running in the same proccess REALLY screws with things.
As for actually rendering an image, I just 1950's it, and set up 2D things in a 3D scene, and render-to-texture a flat UI image. Really saves time when compared to spinning a texture generation script.
For the UI interaction in the Menu, I wrote a generic UnityUI handler that takes in 2D screen coords from SteamVR, and uses them as screen-coords for the menu-camera, then I fire GraphicRays against UI, and manually create a fake pointer-data event, submit it, and Bam, UnityUI works drop in.
I think thats that, Credit/CopyRight to Valve for OpenVR/SteamVR stuff.
Feel free to message me for any questions/comments/feature-requests!