Thursday, August 18, 2016

Dev update #20


It's been a while since our last updates. Some of us took few days off to enjoy some of the summer sun but we're now back in full force and ready to code some VR!

Gear VR edition progress update

Last week we managed to put together core components of GearVR version. We already have working internal version which benefits from fast and stable sensors. Latency is a bit better because of more frequent updates of head rotation. The whole experience is noticeably smoother and has no drift.

Because of similar concepts in both Android and GearVR versions we decided to spend some time to extract as much as we could into shared library to make further developement faster. There is still some work to be done in terms of stability and user experience but things are really looking good and we are satisfied with progress. There is no release date at present but some test version should become available this month. It's now a matter of weeks, not months.

There's a really nice thing about Gear VR native API. We can set CPU frequency to lower (reducing battery drain and heat generation). We hope that it allows to run long Gear VR sessions without overheating.


Soon™

Phone compatibility

We spent a lot of time trying to fix some of the problems experienced by specific phone models (Zenfone 2, Galaxy S4, Redmi Note 2/3, Huawei Honor 4C/P8 Lite). This process takes a lot of time because those problems happen only in very specific configurations that we cannot reproduce with our hardware. There will be beta mobile update tomorrow that will include some extra fixes for Zenfones 2 running Android OS 5.0 (Zenfones 2 updated to 6.0 should work already in beta channel).

If you still experience problems after tomorrow's update (mobile app ver. 1.1.1b) use the Diagnostics mode available in settings and send us logs again. We only received several reports this month and percentage of users reporting problems went down significantly so it means that some fixes in fact worked. 

We'll try to get more phones at the office but since those problems are caused by undefined set of conditions it's not easy because the same model (Samsung S4 for example) can use different hardware for European and American variants. That's why this takes so long. We create a potential solution -> send it to testers -> receive reports -> figure out what went wrong this time. Add some delays for each of the steps above (timezone differences, work schedule, people leaving for a weekend) and it turns out that testing simple fix can take few days.

What's next?

We're gonna refocus more on feature development now because fixing some of the phones (paragraph 2) only affects a very small subset of our users. There are few devices that absolutely dominate the Android market - Galaxies, LGs, OnePluses, Nexuses (or is it Nexi?) - and we want to add some new stuff for people using those phones too. At this point it's probably easier to add Android 4.x support or older GPU support than to fix the mysteries of some of the phone models listed in paragraph 2. There are quality improvements possible, latency optimization, overheating prevention, SteamVR features - a lot of things that are very important to us.

Currently we're aiming to release GearVR edition for public testing (through SideloadVR or similar solution) in the next 14 days. We don't expect to hit any major roadblocks.

P.S. Someone add VR support to No Man's Sky, please! 

16 comments:

  1. As always keep up the good work!
    Nexus 6p works great already but if you optimize it more and add more features that would be awesome! Thank you

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  2. Awesome news!! Now i have access to a Gear VR, so whenever is ready, i will test it...

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  3. Can't wait to try it with my GearVR, also better latency and less battery use\heat sounds awesome! Keep up the great work!
    Would love to hear more about your future ideas for features and stuff you can implement in your next blog post :)

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  4. Keep good work guys. I am just curious - will it be possible to use USB tethering for connection to Riftcat windows application or it will be strictly wireless only ?

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    Replies
    1. Current version of GearVR will be wireless only.

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  5. old GPU ! NVIDIA GTS 360m ! Please !

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    1. I'm actually checking out if software encoding is doable in reasonable amount of time. I'll let you know in next blog post how it went. :)

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  6. Hello, I'm existed by your work on the Gear VR support.
    Bravo, and don't forget the Galaxy Note 4, the first smartphone tailored to the VR.

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  7. Where can I find 1.1.1b version for android? For me it shows 1.0-rc1 still on phone... I have zenfone 2 and I really would like to try it out finally...

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    1. Beta versions can be accessed here:
      https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.riftcat.vridge

      But if you have Zenfone 2 on Android OS 5.0 or 5.1 it won't work. Turns out the issue is more complicated and we are in a process of figuring out alternate fix.

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  8. Thrilled by upcoming Gear VR support - thank you!

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  9. Hello, I recently bought a Nexus 6P(not just for riftcat :D ).
    Unfortunately I am having trouble. I'm not sure if I am losing frames or just have a low fps. Network says I have lost 1 frame and decoding says 5. My PC has an r9 285 and 8gb RAM
    A8-5600k CPU with Windows 10.
    Any help would be great. :)

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    Replies
    1. Try going to mobile app settings and switching render timing modes to immediate. If it doesn't help please e-mail us some diagnostic data - see two articles below:
      https://support.riftcat.com/hc/en-us/articles/208781529
      and
      https://support.riftcat.com/hc/en-us/articles/211601805-How-to-gather-diagnostic-data-on-Android-

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  10. Hello. Would it is possible to have the beta with support Gear VR?

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    1. It will be available to everyone as soon as it's possible. We don't run any closed tests other than in-office testing currently.

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  11. Hello! Im using the Gear VR beta. It seems to have a problem where games are pitch back after luanch. Some games works just fine after launch but turns black either after further loadings screens and random moments. Elite dangerous was black even before it started. The thing is, if I open the Steam VR interface it overlaps the blackness. So that is always visible.

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