Saturday, October 29, 2022

Best VR player for Android (VLC based)

I tried many SBS video players for my VR headset but none seems to provide satisfactory experience. Most players on PlayStore are not satisfactory so i stopped looking for them on PlayStore. I tried to search forums and the search finally ended. Someone has made a vr player which satisfied my requirement and also the player is robust because its derived from VLC player.

The player is open source and available here https://github.com/autoandshare/HeadVR


The player has been published on playstore





Features (excerpt from website):


- Support touch control, bluetooth controller and head control

- Controlled by head motion, e.g., nod to play/pause. (Gyroscope sensor is necessary)

- Support playlist, viewing all the video's without taking off headset.

- Support most multimedia files with underlying libvlc.

- Local and network resources.

- Rich settings to make video comfortable to eyes.

- Force2D mode for stressful 3D video's.

- Support audio and subtitle selection.


I tried the this player and it simply shows the video in sbs etc formats instead of asking for cardboard etc settings. SBS can be customised and all we need is to align the lenses and the visuals are according to our needs. Side By Side is simple format and it should be flexible to move center, left right frames, shape and size of video. Every person has different head, eyes, nose etc and they must be able to adjust the video instead of using a prefixed setup. This simple thing is hard to find but this player does it well. However settings are very irritating because the settings UI is not available within the player screen. Every change in setting requires stopping of video and returning to settings window.

Anyone with coding skills can modify source and adjust the player for personal needs.