Tutorial: Stereoscopic panorama with Corona + Cardboard

[JoeVallard]

Dusted off an unfinished scene to give the VR camera mod a try, before starting the render I also decided to hit 2 birds with one stone and turn on the Denoise. Which works phenomenal! I stopped the render at 47 passes and the default denoise settings made the scene very clean, i actually had to tone it back some, cause I do like some noise to be present.

For those that don't know, with the Samsung Gear VR place the images in Oculus > 360Photos > My Images

[romanbuha]

Dusted off an unfinished scene to give the VR camera mod a try, before starting the render I also decided to hit 2 birds with one stone and turn on the Denoise. Which works phenomenal! I stopped the render at 47 passes and the default denoise settings made the scene very clean, i actually had to tone it back some, cause I do like some noise to be present.

For those that don't know, with the Samsung Gear VR place the images in Oculus > 360Photos > My Images

Hi Jtveclipse12,

So, did you use Corona to get this image? And then you put this image into your Samsung phone into that folder?
Because, as I know Gear Vr understand VRay renderings (which are divided on more squares)...

[arqrenderz]

we are working on our own app, stay tuned ;)

ITS over 9000 !!!!!

[JoeVallard]

Dusted off an unfinished scene to give the VR camera mod a try, before starting the render I also decided to hit 2 birds with one stone and turn on the Denoise. Which works phenomenal! I stopped the render at 47 passes and the default denoise settings made the scene very clean, i actually had to tone it back some, cause I do like some noise to be present.

For those that don't know, with the Samsung Gear VR place the images in Oculus > 360Photos > My Images

Hi Jtveclipse12,

So, did you use Corona to get this image? And then you put this image into your Samsung phone into that folder?
Because, as I know Gear Vr understand VRay renderings (which are divided on more squares)...

I used Corona 1.4 RC2, its in the daily builds. Theres a setting for VR, i just used the default settings with the eye width of  6.3cm. Saved the image into the mentioned folder location above. Oculus 360 Photos app on the Samsung Gear VR recognizes its just fine.

Ive compared the VR render to a standard photosphere and there is definitely depth in the VR one, it is working. The only issue ive notice is they dont generate thumbnails in the file browser.

Here's a screenshot of it in the Oculus 360 Photo App. I'll render out some other angles later.

Also as a note, HDRIs and Backplates stand out like a sore thumb in VR.

[romanbuha]

Jtveclipse12,

Thanks for your clear answer! Sounds great.

So the next question is - would it be able to get the same result on Google Cardboard and when?

[JoeVallard]

Jtveclipse12,

Thanks for your clear answer! Sounds great.

So the next question is - would it be able to get the same result on Google Cardboard and when?

Maru posted the info needed for it to run on Cardboard.
https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,10592.msg67811.html#msg67811
The image needs to be split into a left and right, and the app mentioned is needed.

[FrostKiwi]

Jtveclipse12,

Thanks for your clear answer! Sounds great.

So the next question is - would it be able to get the same result on Google Cardboard and when?

[SEMI-Offtopic]
Currently working heavily on a Cardboard related project.
After trying many viewers, I gotta say, the cardboard experience is heavily dependent on the viewer.
All Google printouts or products based on it suck so badly.

Stuff thats a little more developed, yet equally as cheap like the knox v2 do a good job. You need have a 1080, 5,5 inch phone at least or the experience is awful.
Next thing is implementation, if you use any app outside the Android Cardboard eco system be prepared for some heavy tweaking. All the different viewers are tagged by a QR code, that saves distortion values, fov, de abboration values and so on. But they are encoded behind a proprietary library called the google protocol buffer, which require a .proto, which is on github to decode that stuff + compiling and running the encoded QR code with the .proto file through Google's proto buffer library.
So any viewer that was setup by the google calibration proces, has all the values encoded. I spoke with many cardboard related vendors in the past month. No one has any idea what their values or even what their FOV is, since all data is hidden in the QR code encoded. Thus, any app outside the cardboard ecosystem, that did not take the time to implement this decoder will suck suck suck.
Since I'm kinda coding around in the field, I will post a conversion app in about a month for other to get their Viewers values, since currently nobody did anything like that.

But other than that, the experience is really great for us archviz people. It does it's job once properly setup.
[/SEMI-Offtopic]

[JoeVallard]

Jtveclipse12,

Thanks for your clear answer! Sounds great.

So the next question is - would it be able to get the same result on Google Cardboard and when?

[SEMI-Offtopic]
Currently working heavily on a Cardboard related project.
After trying many viewers, I gotta say, the cardboard experience is heavily dependent on the viewer.
All Google printouts or products based on it suck so badly.

Stuff thats a little more developed, yet equally as cheap like the knox v2 do a good job. You need have a 1080, 5,5 inch phone at least or the experience is awful.
Next thing is implementation, if you use any app outside the Android Cardboard eco system be prepared for some heavy tweaking. All the different viewers are tagged by a QR code, that saves distortion values, fov, de abboration values and so on. But they are encoded behind a proprietary library called the google protocol buffer, which require a .proto, which is on github to decode that stuff + compiling and running the encoded QR code with the .proto file through Google's proto buffer library.
So any viewer that was setup by the google calibration proces, has all the values encoded. I spoke with many cardboard related vendors in the past month. No one has any idea what their values or even what their FOV is, since all data is hidden in the QR code encoded. Thus, any app outside the cardboard ecosystem, that did not take the time to implement this decoder will suck suck suck.
Since I'm kinda coding around in the field, I will post a conversion app in about a month for other to get their Viewers values, since currently nobody did anything like that.

But other than that, the experience is really great for us archviz people. It does it's job once properly setup.
[/SEMI-Offtopic]

I have found the Gear VR more enjoyable to use use VS the iamcardboard i had. The FOV was greatly different. With the cardboard it felt as if you were looking through a tunnel.

The only issues ive ran across on the Gear VR.
1: Not being able to run Cardboard apps out of the box
2: My lenses are constantly fogging up.

Ive loaded the same photosphere in both Gear VR and Cardboard. Its a bit smoother in the Gear VR compared to cardboard.

[FrostKiwi]

Fov is different with every viewer. Some, like these have stupidly low FOV, due to their build. It really depends. I have seen everything from ~70° up to ~110° working.
You have to get lucky finding the right combo of phone and viewer. But Cardboard will never even come close to something so well developed as gear VR.

And smoothness... ohh yeah I'm concerned as hell hitting good frame times. With de abboration and correct undistortion stuff gets laggy fast, without awesome low level impelmented stuff like unity does.

[AM_visualization]

2: My lenses are constantly fogging up.

I've the same problem, solved using a antifog diver spray!!

[rambambulli]

we are working on our own app, stay tuned ;)

Yiiihaaa. Great Ondra.
Please share some ETA. I'm planning to rewrite/adjust the latest update of the webVR-boilerplate so it can be used with Corona 1.4 Stereos. But whenever I can postpone having to write some Javascript I centainly will :D.

[Ondra]

no ETA yet. It will be properly announced

[vertigo1]

we are working on our own app, stay tuned ;)

Excellent!

[Dionysios.TS]

I answer at two questions/issues read above: (I have the Gear VR since last weekend so I am learning too...)

1. Use Cardboard apps in Gear VR

Just download the "Play Cardboard apps" from the google store and will do all the job. Is a simple app which basically turns off the Oculus SW when the phone gets into the viewer every time. Very neat and simple and it works! :)

2. As for the thumbnails, I read that you have to load a small PNG thumbnail in the same 360PHOTOS folder where the high res image is saved and use the same name... Didn't tried it yet.

My two cents!

Dionysios -

[vertigo1]

By the way, the 360 photo viewer in Virtual Desktop presents Corona VR output remarkably well. It can also display the 12:1 cubemaps (not quite as well) and is all around a pretty nice software to have if you are using a PC based VR HMD.