cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

[Gear VR] No Audio While Casting (Any Workarounds?)

treybomb
Honored Guest
When casting Oculus Gear VR to Chromecast, audio seems to be completely disabled in many/most apps.  Audio seems to work in some apps/contexts (e.g. Oculus Home, Smash Hit, etc.), but it most others I tried there is no audio whatsoever.  Is this a known issue, and is there a fix in the works?  Are there any workarounds for this issue or ways to manually/explicitly force audio output via wired headphones for example?  Thanks!
9 REPLIES 9

cybereality
Grand Champion
Yes, this is a known issue. Depending on how the app/game was made, it may be affected by a bug which makes sound glitch out. To avoid a poor or uncomfortable experience, the audio is automatically disabling in the titles that are affected by the issue. From what I understand, the developers of those titles would have to update their apps in order to restore audio casting support. Sorry.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV

Anonymous
Not applicable
But why deactivate the sound on the phone too? 

Anonymous
Not applicable
And is there a list of apps they do work?

jemay92
Honored Guest
is this possible to force the phone to route the sound just to the jack output while casting and video to chromecast ?

thanks for your answet.

TobiWoVR
Honored Guest
I found a Workaround in the commentary section of a youtube video, i'll just copy it here for you:

"Go to developer option setting on phone and open a secondary screen. Then go to chromecast on your phone and cast to your tv, THEN connect your phone to the gear vr. Like i said, it will STILL show the double screen as Chromecast is mirroring exactly what's on your phone screen. Th ere is very little lag but sound works fine. The secondary screen wont show up on the tv. You can mirror without the secondary screen but I think it runs smoother with the help of the secondary screen. I have a Galaxy note 8."
(by 
Ashley McDaniels)

I tested it and can confirm that it's working. I chose 480p for the simulated second screen resolution.


firagabird
Adventurer
@cybereality

I've posted the Chromecast issue onto the bug tracker: https://developer.oculus.com/bugs/515262895515014/

What's especially ironic is that Oculus Prologue, a supposed first-party app that's meant to show Gear VR games in the best light, also has audio disabled. You claim that developers need to "update their apps", but I have found no documentation in the developer section of this forum that instructs us devs how to do this. If Oculus Prologue is anything to go by, not even Oculus themselves know how to update their app to enable audio.

Besides audio being disabled by every single game, Oculus Home itself has unacceptable audio lag. Basically, the Chromecast feature is effectively video only, simply because no single aspect of the audio experience is broken, and as been for months with zero transparency on its progress despite months of the problem being publicly known.

If you'd like to discuss this issue further, we can continue in the bug tracker page, which was released precisely to promote the transparency that I have yet to see from the support team.

S7 Exynos Nougat. 2017 Gear VR. Public test channel.

rodrigo_varas
Honored Guest

I developed a small application, just to see the audio problem. The application is developed with Unity 2017.3, latest version and with Package 1.21 of oculus for unity, also the latest version.

The 3D scene has an OVRPlayerController, a plane and an ambient audio.

The application runs on a samsung S7 and gearVR, and sends the information via Chromecast. First I connect the Oculus application to perform the Cast, and then I run my test application, the image and the movement is perfect but there si no audio. On home oculus platform, the audio works fine, but not in the internet application, for example.

Where is the problem, Unity or Oculus ?

Thanks 

Anonymous
Not applicable
I did the Chromecast thing with the same issue, NO SOUND! I was super pissed, but guess what....theres a solution for some of you people. If your smart tv had any type of casting capability, then you are in luck. My Hisense smart tv has something called Anyview Cast. I am using a Note 8 that has Smartview and BOOM, GearVR and sound from the TV! Hope this helps some people! There is a slight delay on the video sometimes, but its viewable with sound at least. 

absolutemuppet
Honored Guest

TobiWoVR said:

I found a Workaround in the commentary section of a youtube video, i'll just copy it here for you:

"Go to developer option setting on phone and open a secondary screen. Then go to chromecast on your phone and cast to your tv, THEN connect your phone to the gear vr. Like i said, it will STILL show the double screen as Chromecast is mirroring exactly what's on your phone screen. Th ere is very little lag but sound works fine. The secondary screen wont show up on the tv. You can mirror without the secondary screen but I think it runs smoother with the help of the secondary screen. I have a Galaxy note 8."
(by 
Ashley McDaniels)

I tested it and can confirm that it's working. I chose 480p for the simulated second screen resolution.




This worked for me. You see the double screen but at least you get video and sound. Nothing else I tried worked as well. Thanks.