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Starting VR from inside a non-VR app?

kavs
Honored Guest
I work in the mobile game space. Games I work on aren't really suited for VR, but there are parts that could be turned into a VR experience pretty easily and convincingly.

Let's say I had a top-down 3D racing game. The gameplay and racing is handled outside of VR, but what if I wanted to allow the user to enter VR to view your cars in the garage? Or after the race, go to the finish line in VR and watch yourself finish the race.

When I build an app for GearVR, it asks me to 'please insert the device into the GearVR' which then boots the app. Is there support for nested VR like this inside a non-VR mobile application? I'm assuming not, but am hoping it's on the roadmap somewhere. Companion viewers would be a reasonable stepping stone if you could access game data from other applications, but it'd be neater to have it all in one bundle.
4 REPLIES 4

cybereality
Grand Champion
No, this is not supported currently. Sorry.
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kavs
Honored Guest
No problem! Good to know and thanks for the quick response. 🙂

markya0616
Protege
How about the hybrid app?

Anonymous
Not applicable
"kavs" wrote:
I work in the mobile game space. Games I work on aren't really suited for VR, but there are parts that could be turned into a VR experience pretty easily and convincingly.

Let's say I had a top-down 3D racing game. The gameplay and racing is handled outside of VR, but what if I wanted to allow the user to enter VR to view your cars in the garage? Or after the race, go to the finish line in VR and watch yourself finish the race.

When I build an app for GearVR, it asks me to 'please insert the device into the GearVR' which then boots the app. Is there support for nested VR like this inside a non-VR mobile application? I'm assuming not, but am hoping it's on the roadmap somewhere. Companion viewers would be a reasonable stepping stone if you could access game data from other applications, but it'd be neater to have it all in one bundle.


I recommend you take a look at Google Cardboard API.
They do support hybrid app development (toggle VR mode):
https://developers.google.com/cardboard/overview