Chapter 15
Dreams on Quest
Quest is not a second Dreamer Pro. It is a second build of your world.
Almost everything behaves the same way. One rule changes while a Dream is playing. A few more things are handled for you when you upload.
Three performers animate at once#
On a Quest build, three Dreamwalkers animate in any one moment.
The rest are not hidden. They are still on stage, still visible, still where their Cue put them. They hold the pose they were last in.
Which three? Dreamer Pro looks again every frame and takes the first three in Dreamwalker order. That is the order they sit in on the Dreamwalkers page, not the order they walked on. So if a performer higher up the list becomes ready, it takes a slot, and a lower one stops animating where it stands.
Watch for
nothing tells you about this while you build. Lint says nothing. The upload does not stop. The only message is one line in the world's log, and it arrives after it has already happened.
To see it before you upload, open the Preview page and set Platform to Quest. A badge counts the performers being held.
Good to know
PC builds are never capped, and that includes PC VR. Test in a headset on a PC upload and you will never see this. Quest is where it happens.
Recordings are not capped. Every clip still loads, so a fourth performer starts moving the instant a slot frees up.
The fix is timing. Stagger the cues that bring performers on, so no more than three overlap.
Giving a Dreamwalker a lighter avatar#
A Quest headset cannot carry the avatar a PC can. So a Dreamwalker can hold two.
Turn on This avatar has a Quest version. Drop the light avatar into Quest avatar. It can live anywhere in your scene.
Now you build once. The Quest upload keeps the Quest avatar. The PC upload keeps the PC one. Your own scene is never changed either way.
Watch for
leave that field empty and nothing is swapped. The performer does not disappear. On the current setup your PC avatar goes to Quest as it is, which is the heavy avatar on the weaker device. On the older container setup both avatars ship. Lint warns you either way.
Part names are the contract#
Point a Cue, a Move, an effect or a material swap at a part inside the PC avatar and Dreamer Pro finds the same part on the Quest avatar by name.
Give the two avatars matching part names and everything carries across. Rename a part on one of them and that one reference quietly does nothing on Quest. Lint warns for each one it cannot match.
Toggle rows follow the same rule.
Watch for
a recorded voice must play from the Dreamwalker itself, not from a part of it. A part can vanish with the avatar it belonged to. Lint calls this an error rather than a warning.
The Quest video#
Open the Video box and expand Quest fallback URL (optional). Put a lighter encode in Quest URL.
Quest viewers get that file. Everyone else gets the main one.
Watch for
the Quest video must be the same length and the same edit as the main one. Your playhead is the video's clock, so every cue, effect, line of text and performer start is a moment inside that file. A Quest encode that is trimmed differently, or carries a different intro, lands every single node at the wrong time.
Same cut, same length, lower bitrate. Nothing checks this for you.
Leave Quest URL empty and Quest viewers get the main video, at full weight.
Recordings and world size#
Nothing about a recording is limited on Quest. There is no size cap and no count cap.
Loading is paced instead. Dreamer Pro spends a fixed sliver of each frame checking clips, so a large set takes more frames to become ready on a Quest headset than on a PC. It gets there. It does not fail for being big.
Good to know
once a recording is loaded it stays in memory for the whole session. Many long recordings is a real Quest memory decision, and the three-performer rule does not protect you from it.
Embedded clips travel inside your world. That costs download size. Hosted clips do not, but they arrive over the network and can fail. On Quest the trade leans harder. World size is the tighter budget.
What is not different#
Quest is VR. Everything that needs a headset is on there: hand surfaces, the wrist panel, haptics, posing.
Creators sometimes read Quest as the cut-down platform and assume those are missing. They are not.
The player controls artwork is shrunk for Quest automatically when the player is built. You do not have to touch import settings.
Cues, Moves, effects, sky, sound, text, image cards, prompts, teleports, the Camera track: all the same on both.
Good to know
the same rules apply to any mobile build, not only Quest.