SteamVR
Well another update has emerged and in my eyes a big one, maybe.
I was recently sent a Vive by Valve to aid the development of my player on that platform. It's really nice to get free stuff and in this case it has really helped me in getting my player compatible with the Vive using the SteamVR plugin for Unity. This hopefully should mean it's now compatible with other SteamVR compatible devices. So this includes support for OSVR. To be honest as far as I'm aware when it comes to public consumer VR headsets for computer systems there are really only three, the Oculus, Vive and OSVR. It's good to include support for all three devices with one plugin.
So currently the player has split in two with a separate streams for the SteamVR build. The two versions apart from the Steam support are identical so all features should be the same. you can download from here http://www.whirligig.xyz/player2-1-2/ I am hoping to condense these two versions down to one in the very near future.
There are other updates apart from the SteamVR support and here they are.
Other Updates
- The Whirligig format has been born .wlg Why I hear you cry, Why WHY WHY!!!!! Well I wanted it and the use may well help development in the future. The first thing that the wlg format allows is to reference another video files and give it different settings but be it's own thing. I've added the ability to set a frame range for a video. What this means is that you can have several referenced wlg files that look at the same video and have different frame ranges. This can help if you want to say, make a game. The second thing which I haven't added yet is the ability to have files which give different properties to Whirligig. I intend in the near future to add a Webcam.wlg and Spout.wlg options which will stream webcam and spout stuff to the player. Adding a file type will set me quite a way down that road.
- Fixed hotspot sbs and mono not loading correctly.
- Updated the Video plugin to the latest build.
- Updated Unity version.
- Andrew Hazelden has kindfully provided another custom format LatLong 360x90 visit his page at http://www.andrewhazelden.com/blog/
Submission to the Steam site
I've started the process of having my player on the Steam site. There are going to be several ways to distribute your VR applications, the Oculus Store and Steam being the two main ones. I've already started the process of getting my player on the Oculus site and now I've started the process of getting it on Steam. Now Whirligig has SteamVR support it seems only natural to distribute it there as well.
Pricing is a big question regarding getting your player out there through this route. Up until now I've given it away for free and excluding the small number of greatfully received donations have made no money on it. Now that I'm going to put it on the Oculus store and Steam I'm going to charge for it. Only a small amount probably around 3 euros. There are some really good advantages in this type of distribution. Firstly anyone who purchases it are supporting future development, that's good for me :) and secondly you will get all automatic updates and based on the popularity of it I will be adding new feature at a continuous rate. I don't intend to remove the ability to download it from here though. I'm considering having it free to download from here with less frequent updates. I'm hoping that people will purchase it just for the convenience of having it in there library.
Let me know what you think. There are lot's of players out there and most likely to be more coming soon. I've spent a lot of time making mine unique and hopefully it will stand out from the crowd.