Notes on XR/VR local Unity-Multiplayer

We have a project on VR / XR (mixed reality) multiplayer. Our requirements are local multiplayer visible on-site and connected play. So a local multiplayer, but connected digitally. Some notes from me.

Analysis about 3rd party cloud services

• Using Photon or Quest 3 Colocation features seems a little to much overhead to setup a develop for, because there is lot of setup in the cloud.
• Hosting i.e. Photon self-hosted is a very pricy thing.
• Also going down with Proton seems not only costly, but they changed their packages and pricing many times in the past. Since our piece will be played only accasionaly on festivals, using a lib / services, that is changing seems not to be the best way to go.
• Photon has its own value, but seems to be suited for really VR apps in the wild, not our use-case.

Approach

• Experiments with Unity and Netcode for GameObjects seem to be the way to go.
• All our network infrastructure will run through a cloased WiFi setup, only for the participats, so we also do not need to setup some sort of Sessions, Waiting-Room or the like. Participants will just spawn instantly into se session and will get maintained by the the game-logic. „Plug and play“-tech-setup.
• One thing we need to get resolved is using some sort of shared origin anchor for all participants in the session.

PS: Thanks to this article, to get me more into taking notes on medium!