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Live streaming from gear vr

Oct 08, 2017 Militant Atheist link
I noticed yesterday that the gear vr can do video capture and live streaming but they only work with certain games. I was a wee bit disappointed to find it didn't work for VO.

Playing VO in VR is the kind of thing that can never be adequately explained; it must be shown.

Is there any chance that a future version of the VO on the oculus store will support those features?
Oct 08, 2017 Luxen link
If I remember correctly, Incarnate said that VR is not feature-complete, so it may very well just be one of those things on the backburner.

However, you CAN livestream in SimVR mode using another program like OBS or Shadowplay. I can do my next stream with SimVR mode turned on, if you'd like.

I played with SimVR a bit here and here. SimVR merely "simulates" the VR enviroment, with the exception of the dual render outputs.
Oct 09, 2017 incarnate link
So, the livestreaming feature was added well after we launched on GearVR.

We haven't looked into it.. I agree it would be interesting. I am a bit concerned, as our game is one of the most hardware-intensive of the GearVR titles, and adding livestreaming seems like a big burden for a phone (granted, the video encoders are all in hardware, etc).

I think it sounds neat. But, we're pretty swamped with high-priority development goals right now, I don't know when we'll get to such a thing.
Nov 28, 2017 dblthnk link
"our game is one of the most hardware-intensive of the GearVR titles"

I can run this game on Samsung s7 plugged in charging and it doesn't overheat the phone. You've done an amazing job. I can't stress enough how well it runs compared to a LOT of the other titles.

For example, a game that would seem so relatively simple as "they live to destroy" overheats the phone inside half an hour without any charging going on. Can't even look around in altspace vr without the phone crapping out.

This game I played it for hours and hours yesterday plugged in and charging and it barely heated up at all.
Nov 28, 2017 incarnate link
That's really great to hear, we put in a lot of effort to try and optimize for thermal efficiency. We do some interesting dynamic tweaking of clock speeds and engine settings, at various times, to get it to work like that. Plus there was just a lot of optimization across the board. It was an interesting balancing act.

Oculus told us in the very early days (before the Gear came out) "This is going to be 'casual VR', no one is going to play GearVR for more than 20 minutes", and I was like.. "you don't understand our player archtype" :). I knew people would be putting in hours on the system, so we did what we could to make it work.

Even with the thermal efficiency though, there is evidence that we do "stress" the overall device a lot more than most other games. Partially because we use "everything" at the same time.. CPU, GPU, Wifi/LTE, flash I/O, microphone, voice recognition, voice chat, bluetooth. I mean, we don't use the camera or GPS, but that's about it, heh. Most games are single-threaded (or "practically" single-threaded), we're spinning up all the cores we can, etc.

That's where I'm not sure if we can bolt-on "live streaming" without screwing up our delicate system balance. But maybe for the newer devices.

Anyway, it's awesome to hear that it's working well. We hope to ship a GearVR update sometime soon.
Nov 28, 2017 dblthnk link
I love this game and if you ever add cosmetic mtx I'll buy them. I probably won't pay for any sub Greater than lite because life, but mtx I have no problem buying.