VR viewer thoughts / wishes Tweet

[v-cube]

Hello, please excuse the length of this post, it is based upon a message I send Otoy in january, since I did not get much feedback, I will post it here again.

In the last 6 month we have been able to finish several commercial projects with connected interactive VR panoramas using Gear VRs and the ORBX viewer.

We have been experimenting with this tool for about one year now, started with a modified cardboard HMD and are now very happy with the s6 + Samsung gear VR.
I was able to adapt the script provided by otoy for connected vr panos and create our own vr scenes, which contained up to 8 different connected panos.

Some of our customers are really blown away with this technology and we are confident that this will generate a lot of business this year, especially while this is still regarded (and payed...) as high end technology.

While I feel pretty happy in general, I have one major problem right now and this is how the customer accesses the VR scenes:
In an Ideal world I would like to be able to hand out or even rent the HMD (the s6 and the gear VR...) that would just show my vr scene and nothing else.

Right now this is a little complicated, because the VR scene is only accessible through the oculus gear vr app and within this app, the otoy program is just one of many other programs they could start...

The reason I do not think that this is ideal are the following:

first the guys who make the decisions are often not so technically versatile ( often they are 55+ …) so each layer of starting something, selecting something etc. puts another barrier between them and the tool.

My second though is, that If it would be possible to approach the client with a customized and exclusive interface (e.g. with the clients logo...), they would value the whole visualization package a lot more.
Just imagine you are a CEO of a company and you are about to receive a VR Presentation.

Right now we do it the way that one of our staff is putting on the HMD, navigates to the otoy app inside the oculus store, starts our scene and hands it over to the CEO who basically starts in the first VR pano (no intro, no getting used to the feeling of having the HDM on ...).

How much cooler it would be if the CEO could put on the HMD himself and the scene automatically starts. Fist 4 seconds black screen, then fade in of the CEOs company logo and / or the project name (this could be just a optional, customize able mpeg clip like the otoy logo which appears after starting the app right now...)

This way we could leave the HMD with the customer, he could take it and show it around ( these guys love to do that...) the HDM would exclusively play the provided VR scene undisturbed and clean.

Another possible scenario would be to show VR scenes to people in a trade show environment...

I would really pay a considerable amount of money if such a (pro?) version of the ORBX viewer would be available, since I am sure I could easily charge my clients 30 % more for a clean and customized VR experience.

I am very interested in your opinion about this

best

Andreas

[ristoraven]

Interesting thinking.

I understand very well what you are saying. There are people who loves the idea of technology, but don't care to figure it out at all.
At early on, these people should be trained (as annoying as it sounds) to search their own app from the main VR menu. VR main menu should be regarded as a desktop of windows. You know, it would be pointless to teach these people in a way that their own software starts right away when the computer boots. They need to learn how to navigate in the VR main menu and how to open their own app in the VR main menu.

These customers needs to be educated. You are doing them a favor.

There should be node based editor for cubemaps in Octane Standalone, I suppose somewhere in 3.xx cycle.. Not so far away.

Also, it is good to keep in mind that VR in general will start to grow big in 2017-->. 2016 is still for early birds..

[v-cube]

Hello Ristoraven

/snip

these people should be trained (as annoying as it sounds) to search their own app from the main VR menu.

/snip

... well with all due respect, that is exactly what i would like to avoid. One of the points I was trying to make is that the whole interface (the oculus store thing...) is completely unnecessary for our clients and even worse even harmful since it puts your 4000 € scene besides game like stuff popping up and other cheap looking distracting stuff. It is not the neighbourhood I would like my scene to be associated with. I would very much prefer the possibility to have a stylish custom Interface e.g. with the clients logo.
As I said, we already sold several scenes, so I can really say I have some real world experience here.
Generally the response is very good, but this is something which really needs to be addressed IMHO.
Personally I would be happy to pay for such an option.
Is it a problem because all software has to be accessed through the oculus store thing?

I would be interested to hear an developer statement here.

best

Andreas

[ristoraven]

I understand your point very well. It just seems to me that there will be this VR desktop thingy as a standard feature later, so..

I suppose it's not impossible to have an icon in phone UI that would launch the app straight bypassing the Oculus UI..

Oh well, I am sure we will see how these turns up.

[Chriz]

Hi V-cube,

i am absolutely your opinion. I am waiting for this ORBXplayer stuff since last year too. The way though the manu is something annoying, even for me. Allways plugin via usb, copying, unplug, put in Gear, navigating through menu + loading times between, test image and again..

It would be really great to have some kind of represetativ direkt link via icon on desktop (@ristoraven) as with Unrealscenes for example. That workes too, without Oculusmenu. So technically there might be a way for ORBX....

My hope that we will see something like that in the near future tends to zero, as Otoy announced an ORBX dokumentation last year, they anounced a visual interface for connecting media and cubemaps (i think i remember some posts, sorry if i am wrong with this point), i remember someone last year announcing a ORBXwebviewer sometimes... Hint that might help for this point: i am using Vizor for the moment for Webpreview of cubemaps http://www.VRturtles.com (pages not complete yet, but vizor works great!)

To make it clear, I really like Octane, i would never give it away, it´s great. But this new VRtech takes time to develop and it is just a small part in OTOYs portfolio. Thay surely workes as fast as they are able to. Communication is sometimes just a little to optimistic here.

But if someone of the OTOY-guys is reading this: Please take our ORBX wishes serious! Thanks in advance for replying to this topic someday

[prehabitat]

I think this could maybe be an opportunity for our Phantom. (ie phantom scatter, phantom technologies et al)

Phantom has already proven to be comfortable coding for portable devices...


We are an architecture firm who outsources most of our visualisations but are looking at getting into VR as a point of distinction. We won't spend 4K €, more like 1-2k Aud of internal resource as a spend. Three definately going to be a lot of movement in this space this year...

Also, OT: having used a gearVR & S7 combo for the first time recently I was suprised how easily discernible(& distracting) the pixels were. Is that a setup issue? Or just my focusing on the panel rather than the content?

[Goldorak]

Hi V-cube,

i am absolutely your opinion. I am waiting for this ORBXplayer stuff since last year too. The way though the manu is something annoying, even for me. Allways plugin via usb, copying, unplug, put in Gear, navigating through menu + loading times between, test image and again..

It would be really great to have some kind of represetativ direkt link via icon on desktop (@ristoraven) as with Unrealscenes for example. That workes too, without Oculusmenu. So technically there might be a way for ORBX....

My hope that we will see something like that in the near future tends to zero, as Otoy announced an ORBX dokumentation last year, they anounced a visual interface for connecting media and cubemaps (i think i remember some posts, sorry if i am wrong with this point), i remember someone last year announcing a ORBXwebviewer sometimes... Hint that might help for this point: i am using Vizor for the moment for Webpreview of cubemaps http://www.VRturtles.com (pages not complete yet, but vizor works great!)

To make it clear, I really like Octane, i would never give it away, it´s great. But this new VRtech takes time to develop and it is just a small part in OTOYs portfolio. Thay surely workes as fast as they are able to. Communication is sometimes just a little to optimistic here.

But if someone of the OTOY-guys is reading this: Please take our ORBX wishes serious! Thanks in advance for replying to this topic someday

We are working on some key updates to ORBX media player for Gear VR right now. Hope to have that out by end of week if possible. Now that Octane 3 is out, we can finally focus on the VR exporting script nodes for OMP.

[v-cube]

We are working on some key updates to ORBX media player for Gear VR right now. Hope to have that out by end of week if possible. Now that Octane 3 is out, we can finally focus on the VR exporting script nodes for OMP.

That sounds great!
I am really curious.
Thank you for the feedback.

Andreas

[Goldorak]

Streaming is going to be a pick part of the next release. If you saw our recent video this week showing light field streaming on the S6, most of that core framework will be there. All the X.IO demos will play back in textures or layers now - with gaze cursor input and gamepad support if you have a BT one hooked up.

Mesh layers also work, but we are waiting until we get to glTF before making that an official feature in OMP.

[AEponym]

Great news, I'm currently working on a 360 movie project for a client and one of his complaints is precisely the lack of personalization of the interface.

By the way, is it possible to access ORC right now? I read in an older post that it was working if you paid for a subscription fee, but didn't found anywhere to buy it. (I bought V3 license but do not see any subscription basket).

Or is it possible to access it using a special subscription plan more expensive than the final one? Sorry to play the pimp here but my client is really in a hurry an money won't be a problem.