Playing local and cloud-stored 360 and 180 videos in Oculus Go (VR headset)

I’ve been getting this question from a bunch of people, so I wanted to write it up for sharing. Oculus Gallery for Oculus Go is a wonderful player for playing back local and cloud-stored personal video. It supports 360 and 180 (mono and stereoscopic) and flat video, and also supports spatial audio. If a user’s goal is to play back local media, Gallery is a fantastic option.

Video resolution

Oculus Go can decode video up to 4K in resolution. Common supported resolutions are 3840×2160 and 4096×2048.

File-naming convention

The old Oculus file naming conventions are still used to interpret projection type and whether a video is mono or stereoscopic. If you name your videos appropriately, they will automatically play in the correct projection. If for some reason they do not, Gallery has an interface to change both FOV and the mono/stereo flag in playback.

• Add “_360” to the end for mono 360 videos
• Add “_360_TB” to the end for top-bottom stereoscopic 360 videos
• Add “_180” to the end for mono 180 videos
• Add “_180_3D” to the end for side-by-side stereoscopic 180 videos

Streaming or downloading from media servers and the cloud

You can stream or download (to local Oculus Go storage) videos from a local media server, or from a cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive.

• Options for streaming videos (360, 180, flat) from a local DLNA media server (also supports downloading to local storage):
  • Enable the built-in media server in Windows 10
  • Install Plex or Universal Media Server (for OS X, Windows 10, Linux)
  • Purchase a connected hard disk or a NAS box like a Synology DiskStation, and connect them to the same network as your Go
• You can stream or download videos from a cloud service (e.g, Dropbox, Google Drive). Gallery includes an obvious interface for connecting to cloud services.
• You can plug your Oculus Go into a computer, allow access when you see the in-headset pop-up, and drag videos to the Go (put them in “Downloads”, which is where Gallery puts them). You might need to power cycle your Go before manually-copied videos show up in Gallery.

Notes:

• If you have spatial audio (e.g., from an inexpensive recorder like the Zoom H2n), you can use Facebook’s free FB360 Encoder tool (distributed as part of Facebook 360 Spatial Workstation) to mux video and audio in a way that plays back in Gallery and also can be uploaded to Facebook.
• Navigating a large number of media in a single folder is difficult in Gallery. It uses an unordered horizontal thumbnail scroller, which I find to be very hard to use for more than around 10 videos in a single folder. 
• There are good third party players like SKYBOX VR. They are typically more fully-featured, but tend not to support spatial audio very well.