Introducing Visbit’s Unity SDK and Web VR Player
Product Announcement
A new Publisher Portal? A fresh website? A free Plan? Some of you may have noticed a few changes around here at Visbit. We’ve been working on making things as easy as possible for you to get started in VR streaming. The website now has more resources for you to learn from, and our signup process has been simplified. But of all of these changes and updates, we are most excited and proud to announce the release of two new features for Visbit, All-in-One VR Streaming Service: the Unity SDK and the Web VR Player!
The Unity SDK
After months of development and numerous improvements based on beta user feedback, we are proud to publicly release our improved Unity SDK. Now you can use a single SDK to build VR apps to stream your 4K+ 360 videos across development and VR platforms. The Unity SDK allows you to build for Google Cardboard (iOS and Android), Samsung Gear VR (Android), and even Google Daydream View (Android). Though streaming is optimized overall for the various platforms, the Unity SDK stands out when used to develop Android apps for Google Cardboard because it pulls on our patented VVOS technology in the same way that our native SDKs do, allowing streaming over regular WiFi and LTE networks with little to no latency.
Additional Notes:
As of October 18, 2017 — Our latest version of Unity SDK V0.9.1 is now available! It incorporates Visbit’s View Optimized Streaming (VVOS) technology and support across Gear VR, Daydream View, and Android Cardboard platforms. Now your VR apps made in Unity can stream 4K to 6K resolution 360º videos!
Visbit’s Web VR Player
Visbit’s Web VR Player lets you share your 360 VR videos by simply embedding them on your website or with a hyperlink. This makes it easy for those who don’t have the resources or need for an app to share their high quality content. Viewers can now also view the content without downloading an app.
A pioneer in using the WebVR API to make a web player, our Web VR Player departs from the HTML5 standard, enabling us to more easily support features like stereoscopic 360 and allowing more freedom in geometric mapping, letting us efficiently stream up to 4K resolution 360 VR videos despite not using VVOS. Content is also protected with domain-level privacy, making sure your content only plays where you allow.
360 Web Player Compatibility
Unlike other 360 web players, Visbit’s Web VR Player is truly cross-browser, working on all major mobile and desktop browsers including Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. Don’t believe us? You can test this out for yourself against one of the largest market players (you’ll never guess who ;)). Open this link on various browsers and play the embedded videos in 360 mode (panning and gyro) and VR mode (aka with a headset like Cardboard). You’ll see that you won’t even be able to access VR mode on the alternative player without downloading their app, a common practice among other 360 web players. Web VR Player, on the other hand, lets you watch directly from the browser. Other compatibility issues are obvious on mobile, especially in regards to iOS/ Safari.
Safari compatibility is particularly interesting for two reasons. The first lies in a known “bug” where Apple prevents cross-domain sources from rendering. Unfortunately, it considers calling content from the CDN to be cross-domain and this is a core feature in ensuring buffering-less, quality streaming. The second is also a well documented “bug” where Apple forbids cross-domain embedded iframes to pull gyroscope information. This makes it difficult to properly render 360 videos in VR mode on iOS (mobile Apple). Luckily for you, we’ve addressed both of these problems in our Web VR Player, so you can seamlessly stream your high resolution 360 VR videos, even on Safari and iOS, regardless of whether it is on desktop or mobile.
A True Cross- Platform, Cross-Browser, All-in-One VR Streaming Service
The inclusion of these features makes Visbit, All-in-One VR Streaming service one of the widest reaching 360 video services on the market. In addition to the currently supported Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard for Android, we now support VR streaming to Cardboard for iOS, Daydream View, and most major mobile and desktop browsers. Content creators and publishers can now share their 4K and above 360 VR videos, not only in apps, but also on the web, making quality VR streaming even easier and more accessible to the masses.
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Some additional things to note:
- Sign up for a free account to start streaming your VR content today!
- Join us for our Visbit Virtual Labs webinars, where you can learn more about using and integrating our products. Our next one will be about the Publisher Portal.
- Get Updates from our newsletter to stay up-to-date on Visbit products and VR industry news
