UE4 VR KEYBOARD (WIDGET SWITCHER)

I had a look at Mitch's VR Lab, which is very informative, and had a go at extending the eye controlled keyboard since it only has letters. It is quite easy and only takes an hour or so.

Typing in UE4 editor would be a big concern for VR. You need it for naming and entering values.

The VR keyboard doesn't allow for fast typing, and you can see what you are typing while looking at the keys. For instance, in this video, the Search field is way at the top of the browser. Adding a Preview bar like on early electric keyboards would be a good next step.

Steps to create this, supposing you start from Mitch's VR template content example.

1. Edit the keyboard blueprint.

2. Duplicate the Alpha Key Panel. Call it Secondary Key Panel or something similar.

3. Add a widget switcher and drop both panels into it. call it PanelSwitcher.

4. Add an extra key, by copying Space for instance, and callit SwitchKey_123 and another called SwitchKey_ABC. Add these to a widget switcher called KeySwitcher.

5. Add the key inputs to each button in the Secondary panel (@,.!)? and so on

6. Note there aren't enough keys to fit ALL the non alphabetical keys, like numbers and signs so you might actually want to make two new panels to switch between

7. Once all the keys are mapped to the UMG buttons, on Event Construct in the widget, make sure these keys are being added to the key array, so they get included in the event binding.

8. Add a Press event for both SwitchKey_123 and SwitchKey_ABC and use Set Active Widget Index from 0 to 1 for both PanelSwitcher and KeySwitcher.

Note - I feel like it wouldn't be nice to add a side panel for numeric keys on the right, because the more head swinging you do while 'typing' using your HMD the dizzier you will get. There's no way you'd get 80wpm, but it can be handy for filling fields with short amounts of text/numbers.

There's a tradeoff between size of the keyboard (readability) and required head motion. Smaller buttons to mean you'll fight with the headset going out of focus or being blurry, which can cause nausea. And too huge keys mean you're neck with get tired quickly from turning all the time.