HereSphere VR Video Player for Quest 2/Pro/3 supports Handy, Keon, Launch and Passthrough

I’ll begin working on it later this week. Still finishing up the bluetooth haptics update.

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As long as the name of the script is identical to the video name in the seekbar it works fine. I’ve been using it for multiple sites.

Yeah, after checking my code again, the player already looks for the script in the fallback directory if a script isn’t supplied by the website. However, there could be an issue if the title contains invalid filename characters, like /?:&\*"<>|%#@^. The next update will remove those invalid characters from the title before searching in the fallback script directory, since the operating system won’t allow you to rename your file using those characters.

Any thoughts on adding an edging mode toggle to reduce the range temporarily? Or even a range slider similar to handyfeeling.com?

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An update will be released tomorrow that will have the ability to adjust the movement range of haptic devices.

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HereSphere update v0.9.0 for the Quest 2 is now available. This update adds native support for bluetooth haptic devices like the Kiiroo Keon and FL Launch. Additional controls like movement range, manual oscillation, and manual script patterns have also been added, which work with bluetooth devices and the Handy.

Synchronized peripherals:

  • Added support for some bluetooth haptic devices. Kiiroo Keon and FL Launch are supported and tested. Kiiroo Onyx2 and Onyx+ might work, but have not been tested yet.
  • To connect the bluetooth device, power on the device and make sure it’s in bluetooth mode. In HereSphere, click on the synchronized peripherals icon, which looks like a play button with radio waves located above the seekbar. Make sure the peripherals toggle is enabled, and then click on the “Scan Bluetooth Devices” button. A permission popup requesting to access the device’s location will appear, which must be accepted in order for bluetooth scanning to work. Once the permission has been granted, wait a few seconds for HereSphere to scan and connect to your bluetooth device.
  • Added range min/max settings that control the range of movement of the synchronized peripheral. Ranges can be favorited by clicking on the star icon next to the input boxes. Use the keybindings “Next Peripherals Range” and “Previous Peripherals Range” to quickly cycle through the favorited ranges.
  • Added a manual oscillation speed setting that will manually oscillate the synchronized peripheral. Speeds can be favorited by clicking on the star icon next to the input box. Use the keybindings “Toggle Peripherals Oscillation”, “Next Peripherals Oscillation Speed” and “Previous Peripherals Oscillation Speed” to quickly toggle the oscillation mode or cycle through the favorited oscillation speeds.
  • Added a manual script pattern selection box that will play the selected script on a loop. To populate the script selection list, place funscript files that start with the filename “Pattern” into the funscript fallback directory. Use the keybindings “Toggle Peripherals Pattern”, “Next Peripherals Pattern”, and “Previous Peripherals Pattern” to quickly toggle the pattern mode or cycle through the patterns list.
  • Added a pause button in the synchronized peripherals menu that will pause the device without needing to pause the video. The keybinding “Play/Pause Peripherals” can also be used to toggle the play/pause state of the device.
  • Added a “Direct Control Peripherals” keybinding that allows for direct manipulation of the movement of bluetooth devices. For example, you can assign the keybinding to a button, set the keybinding axis to “motion controller up”, and then set the scale to 0.1. When the assigned button is held down, you can control the bluetooth haptic device’s movement with the motion controller’s up/down movement.
  • Handy script download urls are now cached to speed up the script upload process.
  • The synchronized peripherals menu in the user settings has been removed since the menu can be accessed by clicking on the icon above the seekbar, making it redundant.

Quality of life improvements:

  • XBVR multipart scenes with multiple subtitle files will automatically load the matching subtitle file when the “multipart encodings” toggle is enabled in the user settings.
  • Changed rating and favorite icon color brightness so it’s easier to tell the difference for those who are visually impaired

Bug fixes:

  • Fixed issue with parsing srt subtitles that contain multiple lines
  • Fixed issue with subtitles sometimes failing to display when opening a video
  • Fixed issue with default presets not being applied to new videos when the player has to switch the projection format
  • Fixed issue with player always resuming a video even when the “Resume From Last Position” toggle is disabled.
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Sorry if this is a silly question. I normally use scriptplayer and Heresphere to play a downloaded vr scene with a matching script running off a shared folder on a network drive. Is this something that I can now do on just Heresphere running off my quest 2 with the most recent update?

If you’re using the Handy, Kiiroo Keon, or FL Launch, then HereSphere can control them directly on the Quest 2. For the Handy, input your connection key. For the Keon or FL Launch, press the scan bluetooth devices button in the synchronized peripherals menu. Make sure the script is in the same directory as the video, and has the same file name except for the file extension.

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Thank you so much! Heresphere is the best purchase I’ve made for my quest 2.

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Awesome update! I will test that asap…

I tried out the bluetooth interface with my launch and it was a great experience. Wonderful not having to relocated a laptop. My only issue is when I try to swap between videos I frequently get an SMB not found error. It only happens when changing videos after one has already been running. Probably something to do with how I set up the SMB.

Exiting Heresphere and then re-entering allows me to access the SMB again. Quirky, but easy to work around.

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This is a really great update! The manual oscillation mode and being able to adjust the range right in the app is one of the best features that’s been added!

  1. Does bluetooth connectivity not work with the Handy when it’s switched from wifi to bluetooth mode? The couple of times I tried it, this did not work for me.
  2. Is this the update that fixes the playlist issues? It still crashes for me when creating playlists, but I have not tried to do an uninstall and fresh reinstall of Heresphere.
  3. This is something that’s annoying, but isn’t the most important thing for me at the moment (shuffle play and a gap filler are much further at the top of my wishlist). I like to listen to my spotify account on the web browser. If I play a video and then play something from the browser everything works fine. If I then open the menu back up, go through my files to select a new video, and then open the browser again with my spotify account, the browser refreshes the page which stops the music and takes a while for everything to load again. As I said, this isn’t at the top of my list, but if there’s a way to stop this from happening it would be really nice.
  1. Bluetooth for the Handy isn’t supported yet. They use protocom, which is going to take quite a lot of work to integrate into Unreal Engine, and I don’t have experience working with protocom, so I’ve put off implementing it for now. The Handy also plays scripts better (more accurate and responsive movement) when the entire script is uploaded to the Handy, rather than sending individual movement commands over bluteooth.
  2. The scanning folders/subfolders and adding to playlist issue won’t be fixed until the UE5 update later this summer. This update will basically be a rewrite of the entire app, so many things will change.
  3. Better web browser multitasking is one of the goals with the UE5 update.
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SMB can be quirky sometimes. It depends on so many factors. If you continue to experience issues, I’d recommend looking into setting up XBVR, which works quite well with HereSphere.

Thanks for the response. What exactly does UE5 mean? I just want to know what to look out for so I don’t keep bugging you about this feature. :laughing:

BTW I really like the way the script autoloads when you turn off the manual stroking function. :+1:

Is there currently any way to prioritise the fallback directory over scripts direct from sites? Like if an official script is inferior?

UE5 is short for Unreal Engine 5. Unreal Engine is the game engine used to make HereSphere. Currently, HereSphere uses UE4, an older version of the engine. The new version of the engine supports more features, like pass through, eye tracking, hand tracking, etc, so I plan on updating to the new engine by this summer. It’s going to require a significant rewrite of most of my code, so I’m using the opportunity to rewrite the UI/UX, thread management, data structures, and other stuff as well. The playlist issue you’re having is due to thread management issues, so it’ll be fixed along with the other major changes.

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Yeah, I can add a toggle to prioritize the fallback directory.

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That would be great, thanks.

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HereSphere update v0.9.1 for Quest2 is now available. This update has some quality of life improvements and bug fixes. A free demo is available on itch.io.

Quality of life improvement:

  • When using the HereSphere web API, the fallback script directory for synchronized peripherals will be searched before using the script provided by the web API. This allows the user to force the player to use an alternate script than the one provided by the website.

Bug fixes:

  • Fixed subtitles not loading properly when the projection mode is changed on opening a new video.
  • Fixed issue with manually selecting a different script with the web API.
  • Fixed issue with the Handy script playback speed not getting changed if a file has been previously opened.
  • Fixed issue with thumbnails disappearing when scrolling in the media library or playlists.
  • Possible fix for Onyx+ bluetooth connection issue?
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