Category: VR Streaming

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NBA & NextVR Announce 2018-19 VR Livestream Lineup

The NBA and NextVR, the VR video and livestreaming company, announced the 2018-19 schedule, which will let even more basketball fans experience games in VR.

Now livestreaming its third NBA season, NextVR announced in a blogpost that they’re expanding the distribution of live NBA League Pass VR experiences to include Oculus Venues, the app that allows Oculus Go and Samsung Gear VR owners to watch live content in the stands with friends, family, and hundreds of other fans.

NextVR will continue to feature select games in immersive stereoscopic 3D, but also standard streams of all League Pass games in the NextVR ‘Screening Room’ and other on-demand content in the NextVR League Pass channel of the NextVR app.

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The live VR schedule will begin on October 21st with the NBA League Pass Free Preview, which will feature two games: the Golden State Warriors vs. the Denver Nuggets on the 21st, and the Golden State Warriors vs. the Phoenix Suns on the 22nd.

For some games (marked below) you’ll need an NBA League Pass subscription, which can be purchased as a stand-alone VR package or single game, and are included with a subscription purchased through participating video distributors or directly through the NBA.

NextVR’s broadcasts will be available through Oculus Venues (Oculus Go, Samsung Gear VR) and on all other supported VR platforms through The NBA League Pass channel in the NextVR app. The free NextVR app is available on Gear VR, Google Daydream, Windows VR headsets, PlayStation VR, Oculus Go, HTC Vive, HTC Vive Pro, and Oculus Rift.

Free

  • NBA 3D Stereoscopic VR games during 4 free preview windows
  • NBA games in the NextVR Screening Room during 4 free preview windows
  • *NBA League Pass not required.

NBA League Pass

  • 26 NBA 3D Stereoscopic VR games
  • NBA League Pass games in the NextVR Screening Room
  • Schedule of Live League Pass Package games
  • *NBA League Pass required.
Image courtesy NextVR

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‘Plex VR’ App Comes to Gear VR, Social VR Viewing to Arrive ‘in a few weeks’

Plex, the media server software that lets you stream your own video, music, and photos to a bevy of devices, has landed on Gear VR with its latest app Plex VR. The app, which includes support for 360180-degree and 3D videos, first made its way to the Daydream platform earlier this year.

Update (04/06/18): Plex VR is now available on Gear VR for free, giving you all the abilities of the Daydream Plex VR app minus the ability to host multi-user viewing sessions. Plex says in a recent blog post that the social VR function will be available on Gear VR “within a few weeks.”

The original article follow below.

Original Article (01/25/18): On top of letting you stream any content stored on your Plex media server, the app features interactive environments and social viewing with 3D avatars. At the time of this writing, environments include a luxury apartment, a space-based ‘Void’ theater, and a traditional drive-in theater.

The drive-in theater is for Plex Premium members only however, a subscription service that lets you additionally record TV for free over the air, sync your media for offline viewing, enable parental controls, and have ‘enhanced’ media playback.

In the VR app, you can resize and reposition content windows, bookmark a show by creating interactive magazine-like objects, and view 3D and 360 video. More importantly, you can pop into a friend’s media server and watch their locally-store content with them—sort of like popping over to a friend’s house to watch their TV.

You can download the new Plex app through the Daydream Store, or get Plex VR on Google Play.

The post ‘Plex VR’ App Comes to Gear VR, Social VR Viewing to Arrive ‘in a few weeks’ appeared first on Road to VR.

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HTC Partners to Stream VR Games to Vive in China, Cutting VR-Ready PCs Out of the Equation

Oculus and HTC have already reduced the prices of their respective headsets, with the Oculus Rift now selling for $500 and HTC Vive for $600. While graphically-capable PCs are cheaper than ever thanks to new GPUs and software optimizations, you still need to pony up the cash for a min-spec system ($699 for an OEM-built machine). HTC hopes to address this in China with a new partnership between Dalian Television and Beijing Cyber Cloud to offer a set-top, cloud-based box—meaning you don’t need a traditional VR-ready rig to run VR games.

According to a report by Engadget, HTC will be trialing the new project in Dalian, China where it will offer access to games hosted on a digital marketplace separate from Viveport. While it only hosts “a few dozen” games, apps and a library of 360 videos at the moment, HTC says more content will be added over time, of course sourced from Viveport.

The service, which also includes is a 60 Mbps broadband connection, is positioning itself as a consumer streaming solution not unlike Spotify. Unlike Spotify however, HTC is also renting out the Vive alongside the set-top box, making for an all-in-one deal that gives newcomers everything they need to start experiencing virtual reality.

image courtesy Engadget

The set-top box and Vive bundle is reported to cost a one-time, refundable deposit of ¥3,000 yuan (~$455) including a monthly fee of around ¥500 yuan (~$76). Because the deposit is refundable in full, this essentially lets Dalian-based residents test out the headset at home before putting down the big bucks. The company also offers the choice to outright purchase a Vive with a one-year subscription to the service for ¥6,688 yuan (~$1,015). Considering the Vive’s unusually-high price in China, costing around $200 more than most other regional markets, the savings are apparent for customers still unsure about VR.

HTC Vive China Regional President Alvin Wang Graylin admits however some latency is to be expected, saying it would be “ok for most non-twitch apps.” There’s no word if the service can provide what’s largely considered the minimum acceptable latency at 20ms motion-to-photon.

This comes as a part of a larger trend by HTC to make Vive usership less financially daunting. The company already offers a game subscription service via Viveport that includes a collection of hundreds of games at $7 per month, and also maintains a similar subscription program (including headset) for location-based entertainment facilities like arcades or theme parks. Called Vive Arcace, this was also a ‘China-first’ program that latter went global.

One thing is for certain though: a the success of a streaming service like this highly depends on a fast, near latency-free connection—something countries (including the US) have to address before taking the digital plunge.

The post HTC Partners to Stream VR Games to Vive in China, Cutting VR-Ready PCs Out of the Equation appeared first on Road to VR.

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Coldplay to Livestream ‘Head Full of Dreams’ Concert on Gear VR for Free Next Week

Ever wanted to go to a Coldplay concert? If you own a Gear VR headset, you’ve got a free ticket for the VR livestream of the band’s ‘A Head Full of Dreams’ performance next week.

Samsung and Live Nation are teaming up to bring Coldplay’s performance on August 17th from Chicago’s Soldier Field straight to your headset, starting at 8:30 pm CT (your timezone here). The concert will be streamed in VR live on Gear VR through the Samsung VR app, and will also be available for replay for a limited time following the event.

Gear VR users in more than 50 countries will be able to view the VR livestream, and Samsung promises that the VR broadcast will let fans “[experience] the energy of the show like never before.”

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According to Billboard Boxscore, Coldplay’s ‘A Head Full Of Dreams’ tour is the fifth highest grossing of all time, with more than 5 million tickets sold. A Head Full Of Dreams is the band’s seventh album.

Gear VR users have reason to be excited, but, as with many 360 video releases, those with high-end headsets like Vive, Rift, and PSVR, are strangely lef1t out of the loop.

The post Coldplay to Livestream ‘Head Full of Dreams’ Concert on Gear VR for Free Next Week appeared first on Road to VR.

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InstaVR Platform Adds Streaming Support for VR Content

Sharing virtual reality (VR) content such as 360 degree or 3D videos can still be difficult for many content creators as there’s not many good ways to reach all of the available head-mounted displays (HMDs) on the market. Luckily, InstaVR are making it easier than ever to publish VR content on their platform.

InstaVR plans to expand the services available to creators on their platform, allowing for streaming direct to HMDs. Videos can be of any length, and are compatible with Gear VR, Daydream, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Web VR platforms.

Most impressive of all, the streams can be hosted in high-quality 4K 2160p, or even 8K 4320p – though streaming at those resolutions is going to require some impressive servers on the InstaVR’s side, and some decent download speeds from your ISP – though if it all works smoothly as planned, it’ll be incredibly impressive VR videos of concerts, performances and more.

InstaVR’s founder, Daniel Haga, wants InstaVR to be the reliable content platform that creators turn to first; “We’re very proud to announce the launch of our long-form video streaming service. As our clients expand the length and quality of the 360 media they capture, we want to make sure to provide them with a platform to easily and reliably share their content. Our new long-form streaming service does just that.”

InstaVR’s new streaming service will be available to creators very soon.

For everything on the latest VR platforms and services, make sure to keep checking VRFocus.

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MixCast VR Studio Helps Devs Add Mixed Reality Capture Features to VR Games

Blueprint Reality, developers of VR puzzle game Awaken, have launched the MixCast VR Studio on Steam. Developers can quickly add the free SDK to their Unity-based VR games, which allows users to easily set up, broadcast, or record mixed reality gameplay footage with the help of the utility.

Marketing VR products to the masses is challenging, and more developers are using mixed reality as an effective way of conveying a VR experience to an observer using a conventional screen. By combining live video capture (usually with a green screen for better compositing) with 3D rendering, it is possible to video capture the VR user within the virtual environment, correctly scaled, and interacting convincingly with virtual objects.

Unfortunately, capturing good mixed reality video is not a painless process for developers or users. For best results, the real camera and virtual camera need to achieve perfectly-matched calibration, in terms of position, orientation, scaling and FOV. While there are useful free tools to assist in this process, the setup will still involve plenty of fine adjustment and post processing to composite and synchronise the output. In addition, the VR game ideally should offer mixed reality output options, i.e. with multiple virtual cameras and depth information.

Photo courtesy Blueprint Reality
Photo courtesy Blueprint Reality

For now, it seems that Unity-based games have the upper hand; SteamVR’s Unity Plugin has supported the externalcamera.cfg file since v1.0.8, allowing developers to more-easily implement a mixed reality mode. Unreal-based games are sometimes demonstrated with mixed reality capture, but this has been achieved with custom solutions, while developers are still waiting for Epic’s integrated mixed reality support.

Blueprint is reaching out to other VR studios in the hope of tidying up this process, offering a free SDK on the Unity Asset Store that, according to their recent developer-focused trailer (heading this article), takes two minutes to apply. Once enabled, subscribers to MixCast VR Studio are guided through a setup process to enable live mixed reality streaming and recording “without any additional work from the user”.

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Streamers and other video creators would surely welcome a standard set of mixed reality capture features across games, and Blueprint is leaning on this convenience factor to justify the subscription model for the software. However, the list of supported games is currently unconfirmed (beyond Blueprint’s own Awake), and some developers continue to tread their own path to integrate setup wizards, meaning that mixed reality early adopters are a long way from a homogeneous solution. But with MixCast support planned for Unreal Engine too, perhaps Blueprint can solve the mess of mixed reality setup.

In a comment posted on a recent Awaken Mixed Reality video, Blueprint co-founder Ben Sheftel states “Mixed Reality is in a rapidly evolving stage where technological improvements and advances are happening weekly. We feel that a subscription model is a fair way to enable those continuous improvements to be delivered to developers and broadcasters, rather than static pricing with paid upgrades and a slower release schedule.”

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