Here’s a guide to exporting your media depending on whether you want to share your Near-Life VR experience via desktop, mobile or headset.

With Near-Life, you can create one experience to share across multiple devices. However, to ensure that the VR experience works for everyone, there are a few things you’ll need to consider in terms of your media export settings first.

Mobile

Because we use WebVR technology, this means you can launch interactive VR experiences from a mobile phone without installing a special app. WebVR makes it possible to experience VR in a browser, no matter what device you have. This means that your end users can navigate a VR space by moving their mobile device around or can even place the device (phone) in an affordable cardboard headset. However, unlike dedicated VR headsets, mobile devices have limited processing power, which means that playing 4k media will be almost impossible.

Desktop

Again, because the VR experience is being launched via a browser, learners can explore VR spaces via desktop. The experience will be less immersive than using a headset, but users will be able to drag the image around and make selections using a mouse. A desktop has more processing power so will be be able to handle richer media.

VR Headset

A dedicated VR headset, like the Meta Quest 2 or 3 (formerly Oculus Quest), will give learners the immersive experience and is able to cope with 4k media.

If you want to create a single experience for multiple devices, then you should opt for the export settings that will work with the most devices. In this case, go for export settings that work for mobile devices. This will ensure that your mobile device users can see your interactive VR video. The picture may be a little fuzzy on the edges when viewed on a VR headset, but perfectly usable.

If you want to create an experience for each device type, it’s really quite easy with Near-Life. Simply create your interactive experience, perhaps even just create the node diagram, then use the “Copy” function to create a copy of the scenario for each device type. Finally, export your media for each device type and then import it into you different scenarios.

The final thing to remember is that no matter what device you develop VR content for, the final picture quality and performance will depend on the end user’s bandwidth. Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data a connection can handle at any moment.

360 and 180 media is more data-heavy so if a learner’s streaming connection is poor, then the picture quality will degrade and playback may lag or even fail. Luckily, with Near-Life it’s easy to create multiple versions of your experience and let end users select the one that suits their circumstances best.