Dev update #22 - Gear VR first release

Update: If you experience jittery streaming on your Samsung device, see this topic:
https://support.riftcat.com/hc/en-us/articles/211516609

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Gear VR edition is out! You can now download and install it and use full power of your Gear VR sensors. Scroll down for instructions and known issues.

VRidge for Gear VR

Yesterday evening our submission was approved at SideloadVR. Even without a blog post or Facebook/Twitter update some of you found the app minutes after it became available. It had several hundred downloads after few hours. It's amazing how fast you guys are!

It's the first version and some bugs are present but we'll keep bugfixing everything as soon as we can. The first bugfixing update (version 2) should be available shortly after this post is published. 

Instructions

You need SideloadVR which repackages VRidge .apk file for every user individually. It's needed because you can't easily install 3rd party Gear VR apps from outside of Oculus Store.

Remember that you need to turn Gear VR service back on (with CB enabler or any other app you used to disable it) if you disabled it to use your Gear VR as cardboard viewer. If you don't do it, no Gear VR apps will launch (tapping icon will not open anything).

Short version:

1. Install SideloadVR and run one-time configuration.
2. Install VRidge for Gear VR
3. Start VRidge for Gear VR from your app drawer and pair it on the desktop side.

Detailed instructions:

1. Install SideloadVR on your Samsung device
2. Follow in-app introduction to complete one-time setup
3. Go to Browse Marker in left drawer menu.
4. Find VRidge for Gear VR by RiftCat Sp. z o. o. and install it by clicking top right button.
5. You will see Android app installation popup. Some Samsung devices may treat unknown apps as unsafe and you might need to confirm it multiple times that you want to install the app.
6. Launch the VRidge for Gear VR app in your Android app launcher.
7. Pair it with desktop app (same as the regular app - full instructions here)

Known issues

Entries marked with * should be fixed with version 2 released today.

*Double vision / lack of stereoscopy

Few people reported double vision because images are aligned incorrectly. Some of you noticed that the picture is not stereoscopic. You're right, the first version has left eye duplicated twice on the left and right side. This should be fixed by today's update. We were playing around with stereoscopic/monoscopic views and somehow we pushed the wrong version into release channel. Sorry!

*App treated as unsafe by Samsung

Some Samsung Android OS versions were showing big red warning that app is unsafe and you shouldn't install it. We removed some permissions and the warnings should be gone. The permissions were there because Cardboard SDK needed them.

*Green/garbled stream 

Some of you reported that they can't see anything because view is all messed up. This happens on beta version of VRidge Cardboard app too and can be fixed by disabling automatic stream fixes in mobile settings. We're disabling this by default for Gear VR edition since Samsung devices handle stream without any problems anyway and don't need those fixes - "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Hopefully disabling those fixes won't cause any problems. We might need to add per-device user switch if it does.

Latency / delay

Some of you reported unusually high latency. Delay will be obviously bigger vs regular Gear VR apps because we need to stream frames from the PC but it should be still in comfortable range. If you experience large delays please e-mail us at support@riftcat.com and include your Samsung model number and Android OS version. You can it in Settings -> About phone screen.

We will keep tuning the prediction values to reduce the latency. We might need to find the right balance between jitter and floatiness/lag. If you find the current experience comfortable, shoot us an e-mail and describe how it feels. If you give us enough feedbacks we might introduce some default presets + extra sliders so people can fine-tune the tracking.