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I was exploring Oculus Youtube VR app and noticed one interesting thing. When you bring up a menu while a video is playing it kind of fades the video away to overlay the menu. If you look at this faded video behind the menu you notice that, besides it being darker, it becomes much more lifelike and pleasant to look at. Yes you probably lose some details, but somehow your brain compensates for it and it feels like the quality becomes 2x better, you are not noticing any pixelated edges anymore. I encourage everyone give it a try, it really looks better with it. 

I think what happens is they are not simply fading the video away, but applying a semi-transparent chessboard-like pattern on top of it, where one fully transparent pixel goes next to 50% transparent pixel. Kind of like tv scanline effect is used to improve NES emulator graphics, only they use horizontal semi-transparent lines there, and youtube I think just uses a chessboard pattern which works just as well.

A few years ago I noticed a similar effect in  Google Music, where they were applying a simple 4x4px semi transparent chessboard pattern on top of an album art to make low res pictures look more pleasant, and it worked very well there.

I think this might really work well for VR, since it currently suffers from low resolution and pixelated graphics. The trick here is to find a good pattern that works well as there are endless pattern possibilities.

A relative simple way to implement it could be to just let users use their own transparent gif patterns as overlays. This way users can experiment with different patterns and find the one they like the most, to not worry about adding pattern customization menu options.

I know this sounds like a snake oil, but if you give it a try (the easiest way is to just use the youtube menu) I think you will clearly notice that there is something to it, it somehow makes VR videos appear higher quality and more lifelike. I think it shouldn't be that difficult to implement, and it might make a big difference. 

Thank you.

Yeah moving files would likely have the same problems as deletion. Renaming though should work I think, and probably easier to implement.

Thanks for considering it.

I find it that almost every video requires some setting tweaks to look perfect, and it is not obvious what needs to be tweaked as there are too many settings that have non-obvious side effects. One way to help solve it would be having some sort of interactive diagnostic wizard that helps you tweak the right settings for each video. For example when you launch it it could show this kind of menu titled "Choose what you want to fix":

• Scaling issue (everything is too big or too small)
• Double vision
• Out of focus
• Perspective issues (side walls are concave or convex)
• FPS issue 
• Color balance

Choosing one would show you a few related settings with a quick way to adjust and test them to see if it makes it better or worse. For example if you chose scaling issues the submenu could look like:

• Adjust left camera alignment (next to an interactive progress bar you can toggle, and reset to default)
• Adjust FOV (same bar)
• Adjust zoom

This should be a transparent overlay menu above playing video so you can quickly choose and toggle settings while viewing the effect in real time. Ideally there should be button shortcuts for coarse tuning and fine tuning (like moving joystick up/down would select the setting, moving left right would tune the setting. moving left right while holding a grip or a trigger would make larger/smaller adjustments).

This would be easy and convenient way to tweak the important params on the fly in some sort of a sandbox environment. Currently the param adjustments are done on non-transparent menu so its not easy to see what visual change your adjustments make on your video, and even though there is a way to adjust them with a joystick or gyroscope the adjustment speed is not always optimal (it adjusts in 0.01 increments when I want to adjust in 0.1, or vise versa). If you know exactly what you need to change then it's not a problem, but when your video doesn't look right and you are not sure what to toggle it is not very convenient currently to find the right setting. Plus there are some complex camera settings that possibly require multiple adjustments at once that this wizard can automate.

It could be also done in a "does this look better or worse" form, where it adjusts one setting for you and you tell it is it on the right track or not.

I realize this is a very complex addition so don't have any expectations, but just some food for thought for future releases. 

Thanks.

Since there is no way to communicate any playback data from heresphere to pc (like number of plays, tags, star rating, etc), filepath and filename manipulation is the only ways to communicate. I think it would be useful to be able to rename files and move them between folders so you can do something with these files on pc later. For example I might want to move certain files into own folder, or mark certain files for something (even for deletion, since deletion over SMB seems to be problematic).

Thanks.

I can't see an option to have a quick button for toggling autofocus on/off. I think it would be pretty useful to have. Sometimes autofocus starts doing something weird and you want to turn it off, other times autofocus actually helps. Going back to the menu each time camera angle changes to see if it would make an improvement makes me just not want to use it, and leaving it always on I find it doing more harm than good (though in some cases it really helps). 

Thanks.

Your question got me thinking that maybe my videos also look kind of oversaturated. I tried playing with the saturation settings and holy smokes turns out everything really is incredibly oversaturated on red and undersaturated on blue, don't know how I didn't realize it. Don't think it is a problem with the player, oculus screen always looked too warm.  Dialing the saturation down immediately makes everything look much more realistic.

Here are the saturation settings that look like a good starting point to me:

A=0.7; R=0.9; G=0,9; B=1.4

Cranking up the blue often also makes a huge difference, it makes it look like it is filmed under a natural daylight. Sometimes it helps to even crank it to 2.

Videos that I never enjoyed watching because I thought they were filmed with a bad camera or bad lighting now look incredible, it's like I am seeing them for the first time.

Thanks for bringing it up, can't wait to see how the adjustments transform the rest of my videos.

I wanted to share some tips I've learned how to fix the most common playback problems, something I wish someone told me when I was just starting, as I was running into lots of videos that were unwatchable and I thought they were just broken. These days I can fix most of them, they might be not perfect but at least watchable. If you got any more tips please share them too.

Problem: Everything is too big or too small

This is the most common problem probably. It could be either a wrong FOV,  wrong projection, or wrong distance between left and right cameras. First, look to the sides. Are side walls/trees at the edges of the view appear straight or curved? 

If the side walls are straight try adjusting "Right" inside "Camera Stereo Alignment" - if everything is too large decrease the Right from 6.5 to 6, if small - increase to 7. If you have to change it outside of 5-8 range it likely means there is something else going on (likely wrong FOV).

If the side walls all curved, could be either "True FOV" or "Projection" settings. If everything looks really stretched and messed up try switching projection to/from fisheye. If side walls are only slightly bended try True FOV (usually it's within 160-220, if it's outside of this range it's probably something else or a combination of things). Usually with only these 3 settings you can fix most of the common scaling issues.

Problem: Everything is too tall or too wide

Look to the sides, if walls are curved try Fisheye projection on/off. If walls are straight try adjusting the aspect ratio (for example if everything is too tall try changing the aspect ratio from 1.7 to 2)

Problem: Everything is out of focus, double vision

Does this happen nonstop or at certain moments? 

If this happens nonstop try slowly leaning your head to the left and to the right (as if you are trying to touch your shoulders with your ears). Is there a point where it looks sharp? If yes, try making adjustments to the "Pitch" setting under  "Camera Stereo Alignment" and see if it gets better or worse, (if it gets worse it means you are adjusting it to the wrong side), final values could be something like +1 or -1. 

If the double vision happens randomly pay attention to what happens during this time. Is it when you move your head or the object you are looking at moves on the screen? If yes, likely it's autofocus messing it up, try disabling it (I have it permanently disabled). If this happens during the scene switch it means the operator messed the camera up while they were moving it to the new location, sadly there is no good solution here, you can fix an individual scene using some approaches listed above but it would only work for that one scene and could make other scenes worse.

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This is all I can think of for now, hopefully this can help you fix some of those clips you thought were broken. 

What I would like to know myself is:

• What is a solution for getting out of focus during extreme close ups? Autofocus doesn't help much at very close distances it seems (under 10). Some videos look nice and sharp at close ups, some look out of focus, what determines that? I wish autofocus was handling close ups better, this is usually the only time when you need to refocus, when you are just looking around it's all in focus already.
• Some videos are extremely sensitive to pitch (if you lean your head to the side it gets blurry right away), some stay sharp for much longer. What causes this and can sensitive videos be made not so sensitive?
• Anyone got some tips for custom camera lens settings, so I can make some educated adjustments and not just randomly tweak it and see what happens? This is probably where the secret to a perfect picture scaling lies, but those curvature settings are very unintuitive and hard to tweak.

Wanted to thank the author of this great player again, that recent update where the fps was improved made such a huge difference, it now runs silky smooth.

I am also having this problem of it crashing during the file deletion, probably it fails 80% of the time, sometimes it looks like it worked and the file is even not listed anymore, but after refreshing the folder it comes back. I tried pausing, stopping, deleting a file that's not playing, nothing helps. The only thing that works is restarting the app, then it likely can successfully delete the first 1-2 files, but after that it starts crashing again. Yeah it's probably related to it not being able to close the files properly, likely even not the one you are trying to delete but previous ones you watched before that. It freezes during that notification "trying to close open files". 

After testing it a bit more I think the problem is not with v0.5 but with the new videos. They appear to have some odd zoom/pov property inside probably (the world looks too big or too small in them) and that hidden property must be leaking into other videos (I am not touching the player settings). It's after watching those videos  my old "normal" videos start looking either zoomed in or zoomed out. I suspect it has something to do with POV, not the origin distance. To make my old videos  look normal again I have to set POV to 120 or even 90 (only then the frame looks 180 degrees wide again). I will try to find a reliable way to reproduce the issue.

And one more feature idea - when you press that button that shows you a distance to an object in cm, would be useful to also display a protractor sphere type gizmo that shows angles in all directions. This way you can tell if a video that's supposed to be 180 degrees wide is actually appearing as 180 or more like 220/140 degrees, so you can adjust the player settings accordingly.

Thanks.

Hello,

I installed 0.5 on oculus quest 2 and noticed that each time I go back to playing videos after I turn the oculus back on (without exiting the player) the distance to the scene is set at random, sometimes  I am too far so I can see the black horizon circle around the scene upfront, sometimes I am too close so I need to turn the head way behind a shoulder to see the black horizon (same scene). Resetting the view (both buttons) helps a little but not completely,  I feel the problem is each time I turn the oculus back on there is some random distance offset that is being added. I can partially solve it with the "distance to origin" setting but I feel like I now have to adjust it for each video for it to look normal. Then when I go back to the same video next time it needs to be readjusted again as my previous settings don't make sense anymore, what previously was too close now is too far etc.  I used 0.4 before and didn't notice such issues.

Also couple questions regarding settings:

- Are there any setting to adjust the video scale/zoom? Sometimes you feel like the world is way too big, sometimes way too small. It's not a player issue just different cameras probably, but I can't find a setting that would adjust it. Distance to the origin helps a little but not fully.

- Which setting can help with double vision effect at close or far distances? In some videos very close objects are too blurry (each eye is seeing under too different angle to merge it together), in other videos close objects are perfectly sharp but far objects are blurry. 

And couple feature requests for consideration:

- Currently it skips forward a few sec each time you pull the joystick right. Would be great if you can hold the joystick right and it would either skip more seconds (the more you hold the more it skips exponentially) or just repeatedly skips as long as you hold. Look at how Media Player Classic handles skipping when you hold the right arrow key, I think it's almost perfect. You can click once to skip ahead a few sec, but you can also hold it down and it would continuously skip while you can still see short glimpses of the video, so you are not skipping blindly. 

- Being able to adjust the camera pitch/yaw/roll while holding the trigger is extremely useful,  but I wish I could lock individual dimensions from changing, like the roll which is more rarely needed to adjust and more annoying if it's not perfectly aligned.

- Would be great to be able to customize columns in the SMB file browser so it looks similar to the media library, with star ratings, favorites, tags, etc.

Thank you for such amazing player, keep up the great work!