TimeCodeServer Re-emerges

TimeCodeServer Re-emerges
The TimeCodeServer was a way for the player to push out information to a network port that would allow another program to read it. This can be useful for someone who wishes to link a haptic device to the video and have it effected but certain time points in the video. The information that is past to the port is the video name and location, the dometype of the video, the position in seconds of the video and whether the video is paused or playing. This is at the early stages and its use will be dictated by the people using it.

How to switch it on.
To do this you will have to edit the player.ini file located in the "Whirligig\production\menu" folder and the video you wish to send the information out to the ports ini in the "Whirligig\production\menu\inis".

Within there you will find a timecodeserver option which can be set like this:
 
 timecodeserver=off (Timecodeserver is off)
 timecodeserver=on (Timecodeserver is on and set to 2000)
 timecodeserver=2200 (Timecodeserver is on and set to 2200 or whatever number you put in there.)

Once the TimeCodeServer is on you can read the output from it, an example using NetCat is below.
----------------
D:\netcat-1.11>nc localhost 2000
C "D:\Media\videos\My Holiday.mp4"
dometype = 8
S
S
S
S
----------------

As I said it's currently in development and as I'm not using it for anything it requires people who want to use it to let me know what they need to make it useful for them. So if you any suggestions or questions let me know.

Notes on the Script written for this function

The TimeCodeServer was originally asked for by Lovely2 (lovely@crm114.net) for a project he was working on. He wrote the original code and I adapted it for the player. He is happy to release the code and for this reason I am happy to also. If you would like a copy of the script that allows this function please email me and I'll send you the a copy. Thanks again to Lovely2 for assisting with the implementation of this feature for the player.

Download the new version from the download page here :http://www.whirligig.xyz/player2-1-2/

 

Whirligig Updates 2016

Howdy. Well it's now 2016, the year of VR if you believe the hype. I've started back on the player and the first release of the year (actually there was an earlier release but it was small) is mostly a couple of bug fixes and Custom Format additions.

 

Firstly I'd like to thank Andrew Hazelden for his support. He have kindly created some custom formats that will help people with production and when downloading Facebook videos. I've included the update notes below which highlight his contribution. If you are interested in 360 Video production in any way check out his site. http://www.andrewhazelden.com/blog/ There are many great tools on there so check it out.

In other news I've not done anything on my game for a while but want to get back into it now that the madness of Christmas and the new year are behind us. This production should also promote more updates.

I've also submitted my player to the Oculus Store. It is currently under review but once I've got feeback I hope to be able to sell it there. My plan is to sell it on the Oculus store and maybe the Steam site while also maintaining a free version here. I'm not sure if there will be a difference in the versions yet. I've got 3 months to decided. 

Oh and another thing. A fan of the player recently emailed me regarding getting the player to work with Nvidia's  3DVision. He's put a lot of work into writing up his findings and helping others to get there 3DVision's working also. You can find a full explaination

here https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/908302/3d-vision/how-to-play-vr-images-and-videos-in-3dvision-using-the-whirligig-vr-player/

Thanks Brooke for letting me know that this was possible and leting others know how to do it themselves.

Here are the update Notes:

2.93
The dead zone of the joystick input has been increase. This hopefully will fix the issue of some machines constantly pushing left. If you experience this still, please get in touch. I need to establish why this happens and if I need to include a different type of fix.


Custom formats added. 

----
Cube Map Horizontal Tee
Cube Map Vertical Tee
Facebook Cube Map 3x2
GardenGnome Cube Map 3x2
----
Courtesy of Andrew Hazelden http://www.andrewhazelden.com/blog/
Andrew works on a great deal of tools that aid in 360 video production from Photoshop plugins to 3dsMax and Maya shaders.

Vray Cubemap
Vray Cubemap Inverted

Custom Format bug fix.

Rotation limit to 360 rotation as this isn't needed.
 

Happy new year. Let me know if you want new features and if you have any problems. Keep watching. Adios amigos :)

New Update, Anaglyph, OU for custom format and other stuff

2.9
I've added an anaglyph option for non Oculus use. To use this either start the player without the Oculus plugged in or press f10 while using the player. Once in the standard mode (non Oculus) press f7 to cycle through the 3D anaglyph options. This is the first ituration so it might have some issues. Let me know if you run into problems or if there is a feature that this doesn't have let me know.

Anaglyph Options
    GreyAnaglyph
    ColourAnaglyph
    HalfColorAnaglyph
    OptimizedAnaglyph
    TrueAnaglyph

Updated audio Oculus Audio SDK 1.0.1 for addition audio ogg files.
Unity3d version updated to 5.3.
Added Gamepad control to non Oculus looking around.
Add Over Under option to custom Format.


Custom Format Updates

I had a request for a custom format for the Kodeak PixPro SP360 so I've added it. I've also fixed some issues with the cubemaps where they weren't facing in the right direction. An explanation of the custom formats below

Cube Map Vertical

Cube Map Vertical

Cube Map Horizontal

Cube Map Horizontal

Octane

Octane


A bit more details on updates, well pictures anyway.

As I mentioned before I've updated the player and the publisher with a load of updates and hopefully I'll be producing some stuff with them as we go. Here are some images of the updates including the save feature in the player, the reorganisation of the publisher and the addition stuff in hotspots. for the save function press 's'. Also these options are in the gamepad setup as well so you can add a shortcut to the gamepad for the save if you want.

 

And I thought I would uploaded some images from the game I'm working on here :)



Big update briefing :)

OK, so a big update to both the publisher and the player. Loads of updates to both, but mostly unless you are making a game you won't come across a lot of them. One you will be able to use is the savegame option which allows you to bookmark the media that you are watching and return to the media and position you left it. So to do this just press 's' and go from there.

I've also updated to the latest version of Unity which means that the player and publisher requires 0.8.0 Oculus runtime and above.

I'm going to do a proper update blog on this tomorrow but wanted to throw out a quick blog just to let people know. Here is some info of the updates from the readme file.

Publisher

Quite a few changes here.
projects menu
It now selects the project you just made once you've made it.

Menu Menu
Fixed the time and duration so that when imported it selects that button.
Added VR to bottom right corner which will load the player on that menu so you can check it.

Options Menu
Removed the change background colour.
Removed the menu representation on the right and replaced it with showing the media.
Removed a lot of the options that are now unavailable.
switched the position of the disable keys and options.
Added a when media finishes next option. This allow you to go to a different video or menu or the next video in line. New options will be added on request.
Added VR to bottom right corner which will load the player on that menu so you can check it.

Hotspots Menu
Removed the change background colour.
Added a key image. If you select key then you are required to add an image. That image will be the one reporcented in your inventory.
Added an ability to have sound on hotspots. They are positioned in the location of the hotspot and loop and aren't linked to the video sync. They are also reactive to the hide unhide on variable option.
Moved and updated media hotspot location.
Fixed. Stuff, and probably broke stuff, you tell me.
Added VR to bottom right corner which will load the player on that menu so you can check it.
Hotspots were half the size they should of been, or twice I can't remember, anyway it's fixed.

Publish menu
Added VR to bottom right corner and removed test in player.
Fixed an issue with the published file being saved out into the wrong folder.

Player

2.8
Ok so a load of stuff has gone on here. An updated version has happen which means the player is now only compatible in runtime 0.8.0. Unity version 5.2.2p3. You can download an older version from the website that should work with eariler versions of the runtime.

A save function has been added which you can use to save a bookmark to the media your looking at. When you load it will return to the media at the place you saved.

Adventure time :)
I've built in an Inventory and save system for game creation. This the first version and may or may not have bugs. There will be tutorials very soon on this, hopefully.

Fixes, probably a load of other stuff and as always I've probably added a load of bugs as well.

You can now scroll with the mouse wheel on options in the menu.

Looking to the future of adventure

Well although I haven't been posting much. I'm not a great poster person. I have been up to a great deal of stuff.

For starters I've continued to work on Whirligig improving and fixing where I can. A couple of things have changed including an ability to have an ini file with the video file with all the settings allowing people to give out there films with accompanying ini file and people can play without having to setup. I've also included a volume control while in the player with hot keys '-' and '='. This is only a temporary change and any new videos loaded will be set to full volume again. It does however give some control where before there was none.

So where has a large part of my effort been put into then. Well I've started working on making Whirligig double as an adventure game creator. "You're crazy" I hear you cry. "Down that way only madness lies". Well I am doing this for a couple of reasons. One I want to make an adventure game, I've been working on it for a while and this is a good opportunity to do so and two although people like Whirligig and find it useful it is a small fish in a big pond. Before long there will be better featured players with more options and that will also run faster. Whirligig will continue to be a player but one of the major elements I've created it for is customisability. I don't think any other player has or will have such an ability to customise and ease in which to do so (with the publisher). By making a game I will have an ability to extend all these options, add to the wide range of setting that are already available and also make something unique and entertaining. I also want to allow people to do the same and as I'm extending the publisher all these new features will become available to people.

So what's happened so far. Well I've been working on the different locations for the game, many of which are used in this website. I've added an inventory system so you can pick up objects and I've added a niffty if then system that allows you to interact these objects with other objects. The system I've come up with envolves the powerful "hotspot" with a none, key, lock, switch option. Once I've got it in there properly I'll be releasing it with some explanation videos. The next step is to add a 'save' option which I hope to do this week.

So the next version of Whirligig and publisher will include:

  • An inventory system.
  • A Save option.
  • An if,then, do system (I will explain this in full when I release).
  • A positional audio system. All hotspots will be able to have audio attached coming from the position they are set.
  • A next video option so that once one video finishes the next begins(great for cut scenes).
     

All new options will be available and editable in the publisher and compatible in the player. The player will also work in the same way as it always does as well and improvements will be made as time goes on.

I hope people are going to be interested in this. I'm going to do it anyway regardless. I might also do a kick starter to be able to work on it full time. If you're interested and have ideas that you might want to see, let me know. Other than that, watch this space :)

 

New version with added secret menu :)

OK I've added another menu. One of the things about creating your film is that you want to go through all of your media and set them up. You also want to block off menus so people can't access options like tilt, dome size etc. This is all much easier through the player so what I've added is a full menu. If you press f6 you get all the options available to you in the menu. So for example this reveals sound which isn't normally available in the standard player. I've also added an option to disable this key in the publisher.

Hopefully this will make the setup of your projects much easier.

License agreement added

I've added a license agreement to the publisher abd installer. I've wanted to do this for a while but not really know how to do it. Well I've worked it out and hopefully it makes sense. Just think of it as me trying to be professional.

Here they are:

Whirligig Publisher
-------------------
This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the author be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Authors Note
-----------
The Whirligig Publisher has been made using the Unity3D engine and I have worked hard to make it safe to use. However as part of the package I have included other pieces of software such as NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System), the LAV Codec and CodecTweakTool. NSIS and LAV Codec come with there own installers as you would download from there website. If the LAV codec is installed CodecTweakTool is used to register the LAV codec as the default codec for your system allowing your system to play back a wide variety of formats without the need to install a codec pack such as klite.

All of these programs have been tested on a variety of systems by myself and I can confirm they are safe to use. However if you have any doubts you can either choose to not install the publisher or install just the publisher and not the LAV or NSIS programs during this installation. If you do not install NSIS you will not be able to publish your media into an exe package but you will still be able run and use it and package however you like to send to others.

If you wish to download the programs separately you can do so from these sites.

NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System)
http://www.codecguide.com/download_other.htm

LAV Codec
https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters/releases

CodecTweakTool
http://www.codecguide.com/download_other.htm

I hope you like the Whirligig Player and please get in contact if you have any problems - phileday@yahoo.co.uk

Whirligig Player
-------------------
This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the author be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.


Authors Note
------------
The Whirligig player has been made using the Unity3D engine and I have worked hard to make it safe to use. However as part of the package I have included other pieces of software such as the LAV Codec and CodecTweakTool. The LAV Codec comes with its own installer as you would download from their website. If the LAV codec is installed CodecTweakTool is used to register the LAV codec as the default codec for your system allowing your system to play back a wide variety of formats without the need to install a codec pack such as klite.

These programs have been tested on a variety of systems by myself and I can confirm they are safe to use. However if you have any doubts you can either choose to not install the player or install just the player and not the LAV codec. If you do not install the LAV Codec but want to play back formats not natively supported by the operating system then it is recommended you install the codec and register it as your default codec. This can be done in a variety of ways but I recommend a codec pack such as Klite.

If you wish to download the programs separately you can do so from these sites.

LAV Codec
https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters/releases

CodecTweakTool
http://www.codecguide.com/download_other.htm

You can also download a zip version of the player which comes without an installer or the LAV codec from my website.
http://www.whirligig.xyz

I hope you like the Whirligig Player and please get in contact if you have any problems - phileday@yahoo.co.uk

 

Whirligig Publisher update

I've just updated the publisher so that it isn't required to export out two different version for either 32 or 64 bit windows. I can test this on 64 bit systems and it ll works fine. However I don't fully know if it works on 32 bit systems.

I just wanted the player to be one exe rather than two and now I've combined that into the publisher as well so you can publish just one file to your friends and family and whoever else who is interested.

I've also removed the test 64 bit 32 bit version. When you run the test it will just run the 32 bit version which will work on both systems. This means that you might find that the performance in test mode isn't as good as when published but it simplifies the who process so currently this is how it works. This may change in the future.

P.S. Hope you're liking the new site :)