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VR Player

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VR Player
Information
Developer Stéphane Lévesque
Publisher Stéphane Lévesque
Platform Oculus Rift (Platform)
Device DK1
Operating System Windows
Type Pre-Release
Genre Casual, Simulation
Input Device Keyboard, Mouse, Gamepad, Hydra, Other
Game Mode Single Player
Release Date December 2, 2012
Website http://vrplayer.codeplex.com/


VR Player is a Windows media application, originally developed as an experimental project by Stéphane Lévesque, known as StephaneLX, for displaying video and images through head-mounted displays. The original project focused on spherical 360-degree video and stereoscopic playback, with source code published on CodePlex in December 2012.[1][2][3] Oculus Rift head tracking was added in April 2013.[4]

Reviewed 20 October 2026. Original Windows player's identity, 2012-2013 documented features, controls, source architecture, license and development chronology. Legacy publisher, genre, game-mode and gamepad catalog fields are retained without independent verification. Current executable, headset-runtime and online-service compatibility were not tested. About review dates.

Features

Media, stereo format and projection

VR Player separates the media source, the arrangement of the recorded eye images, the virtual projection surface and the output sent to the display. The original source defines three stereo input modes: mono, over-under and side-by-side. Its output layouts include left-eye or right-eye mono, over-under, side-by-side, cross-eyed and dual-screen modes.[5][6] These are separate settings: selecting a side-by-side input describes how the source stores the eye views, while choosing a projection determines the surface on which those views appear.[7]

The documented projection options served different kinds of material:

Projection Documented use and behavior
Plane A virtual flat screen for conventional video. The June 2013 development account distinguishes virtual-screen viewing from spherical and dome viewing.[8]
Cube A basic cube-map projection was implemented in December 2012.[9]
Sphere Surrounding spherical media, the original 360 by 180 degree use case. Version 0.4 also added independent width, height and depth parameters for ellipsoid geometry.[1][10]
Dome Hemisphere mapping and stereo-fisheye unwrapping were introduced in version 0.1.2. Version 0.4 added horizontal and vertical cropping parameters.[11][10]
Cylinder A curved projection surface, with a horizontal crop control documented in the version 0.4 change log.[10]
Full Dome A separate plugin offered for version 0.4.1 in August 2013 for planetarium-style and IMAX-style dome material.[12]
File Custom projection geometry. The importer preserved in the original December 2013 source reads .obj and .3ds files. The developer described this workflow as importing geometry and UV mapping from Maya and 3ds software.[13][8]

Version 0.4 added a VLC media backend for files, streams and DVD playback, alongside GDI screen capture. Its announcement included YouTube streams among the then-supported sources. This describes the 2013 implementation, rather than verified access to present-day online services.[10] The VLC plugin exposed separate paths for its native libraries and plugins, as well as playback, pause, stop, seeking and looping controls.[14]

Plugins and configuration

The player used separate plugin choices for media, projection, effects, distortion, tracking and stabilization. Its configuration could select a media decoder independently of the tracker and projection, and store field of view and horizontal/vertical viewport offsets.[15] The version 0.3 plugin refactor was intended to let developers add tracking devices, projection mappings for particular capture systems and image effects. That release added TrackIR support and a smoothing filter for the Razer Hydra.[8]

Media settings could be saved separately from device settings. In the preserved December 2013 source, the menu offers media, device and combined preset saving. When opening a local file, it can look for a companion JSON file with the full media filename plus the .json suffix, provided sidecar reading is enabled. For example, a file named clip.mp4 is associated with clip.mp4.json.[7] The original code carries a GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) notice.[2]

Setup and historical controls

In the 2013 interface, the media backend and source were chosen separately from stereo input, projection, tracker, distortion and stereo output.[7] For the Rift tracking integration announced on April 30, the developer specified the menu choice Tracker > Oculus Rift.[4] Correct projection and stereo choices depended on the recording being played; a spherical movie and an ordinary flat-screen stereo movie did not use the same geometry.

The following keyboard controls were documented on May 1, 2013. Later versions could differ; editable shortcuts were added in the version 0.4 announcement.[16][10]

Control Documented action in May 2013
Arrow keys and Page Up / Page Down Move the virtual viewing position.
F1 Calibrate orientation.
F2 Reset orientation and position.
Space Play or stop playback.

Historical system requirements

The original Windows source used Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Its December 2013 project file targets .NET Framework 4.0 and defines x86 Debug and Release builds.[17] Media decoding and tracker integration depended on the selected plugins; the VLC backend required the appropriate native library and plugin paths.[14] These are historical implementation requirements, not a tested configuration for current Windows, Oculus software or other headset runtimes.

Development history

Date Development record
December 2, 2012 StephaneLX announced the project and made its early source code available on CodePlex. At that stage he was testing with a PlayStation Move controller attached to a Hasbro My3D viewer.[1]
December 10, 2012 Version 0.1.2 added Dome geometry, stereo-fisheye unwrapping and depth-map-based stereo generation. Position-dependent parallax was described as a future improvement, rather than an already implemented feature.[11]
April 30, 2013 The developer announced working Oculus Rift head tracking.[4]
June 9, 2013 Version 0.3 was released as an alpha, with a refactored plugin system, custom geometry import, TrackIR integration and Hydra smoothing.[8]
August 4, 2013 Version 0.4 introduced VLC support, screen capture, further projection controls, editable shortcuts and other interface changes. Stabilization and process capture were explicitly experimental.[10]
August 31, 2013 A Full Dome projection plugin was offered for version 0.4.1.[12]
December 21, 2013 A preserved commit by stephanelx declares assembly version 0.5.0.0. This is a source snapshot, not evidence of an installer release on that date.[18]

Limitations and accessibility

Positional tracking did not turn a recorded panorama into a freely explorable three-dimensional scene. In the version 0.3 account, the developer warned that moving the viewpoint could deform spherical and dome video, even though translation could be useful for viewing a virtual screen.[8] The May 2013 surround-sound implementation was also experimental: the developer said he had mainly tested AC3 audio with two, four or six channels, rather than establishing compatibility with every audio codec.[19]

A 2022 descriptive accessibility comparison by Marta Brescia-Zapata included the CodePlex player as a separate entry from the Vimersiv application also named VR Player. Its appendix marked the CodePlex entry as lacking subtitle, audio-description, sign-language-avatar and multilingual support. The CodePlex source consultation was dated August 5, 2020. The comparison did not identify the tested player version or report a controlled usability experiment with this application; these entries describe that survey's assessment.[20]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 StephaneLX (2012-12-02). "A simple Virtual Reality media player project". Meant to be Seen. https://www.mtbs3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=89135#p89135. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  2. ↑ StephaneLX (2013-08-22). "A simple Virtual Reality media player project". Meant to be Seen. https://www.mtbs3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=141841#p141841. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  3. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 StephaneLX (2013-04-30). "A simple Virtual Reality media player project". Meant to be Seen. https://www.mtbs3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=123229#p123229. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  4. ↑ Stephane Levesque (2013-12-21). "VR Player StereoMode.cs at the original 2013 commit". VR Player source code, preserved on GitHub. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qyalexwen/VrPlayer/978a1b35e6e33c8f5a089ac5981e15477b847128/VrPlayer.Contracts/Projections/StereoMode.cs. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  5. ↑ Stephane Levesque (2013-12-21). "VR Player LayoutMode.cs at the original 2013 commit". VR Player source code, preserved on GitHub. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qyalexwen/VrPlayer/978a1b35e6e33c8f5a089ac5981e15477b847128/VrPlayer/Models/State/LayoutMode.cs. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  6. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Stephane Levesque (2013-12-21). "VR Player MenuViewModel.cs at the original 2013 commit". VR Player source code, preserved on GitHub. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qyalexwen/VrPlayer/978a1b35e6e33c8f5a089ac5981e15477b847128/VrPlayer/ViewModels/MenuViewModel.cs. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  7. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 StephaneLX (2013-06-09). "A simple Virtual Reality media player project". Meant to be Seen. https://www.mtbs3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=131365#p131365. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  8. ↑ StephaneLX (2012-12-05). "A simple Virtual Reality media player project". Meant to be Seen. https://www.mtbs3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=89531#p89531. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  9. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 StephaneLX (2013-08-04). "A simple Virtual Reality media player project". Meant to be Seen. https://www.mtbs3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=140201#p140201. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  10. ↑ 11.0 11.1 StephaneLX (2012-12-10). "A simple Virtual Reality media player project". Meant to be Seen. https://www.mtbs3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=90005#p90005. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  11. ↑ 12.0 12.1 StephaneLX (2013-08-31). "A simple Virtual Reality media player project". Meant to be Seen. https://www.mtbs3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=142343#p142343. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  12. ↑ Stephane Levesque (2013-12-21). "VR Player FileProjection.cs at the original 2013 commit". VR Player source code, preserved on GitHub. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qyalexwen/VrPlayer/978a1b35e6e33c8f5a089ac5981e15477b847128/VrPlayer.Projections/VrPlayer.Projections.File/FileProjection.cs. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  13. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Stephane Levesque (2013-12-21). "VR Player VlcDotNetMedia.cs at the original 2013 commit". VR Player source code, preserved on GitHub. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qyalexwen/VrPlayer/978a1b35e6e33c8f5a089ac5981e15477b847128/VrPlayer.Medias/VrPlayer.Medias.VlcDotNet/VlcDotNetMedia.cs. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  14. ↑ Stephane Levesque (2013-12-21). "VR Player App.config at the original 2013 commit". VR Player source code, preserved on GitHub. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qyalexwen/VrPlayer/978a1b35e6e33c8f5a089ac5981e15477b847128/VrPlayer/App.config. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  15. ↑ StephaneLX (2013-05-01). "A simple Virtual Reality media player project". Meant to be Seen. https://www.mtbs3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=123327#p123327. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  16. ↑ Stephane Levesque (2013-12-21). "VR Player project file at the original 2013 commit". VR Player source code, preserved on GitHub. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qyalexwen/VrPlayer/978a1b35e6e33c8f5a089ac5981e15477b847128/VrPlayer/VrPlayer.csproj. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  17. ↑ Stephane Levesque (2013-12-21). "VR Player AssemblyInfo.cs at the original 2013 commit". VR Player source code, preserved on GitHub. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qyalexwen/VrPlayer/978a1b35e6e33c8f5a089ac5981e15477b847128/VrPlayer/Properties/AssemblyInfo.cs. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  18. ↑ StephaneLX (2013-05-06). "A simple Virtual Reality media player project". Meant to be Seen. https://www.mtbs3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=124372#p124372. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
  19. ↑ Marta Brescia-Zapata (2022). "The Present and Future of Accessibility Services in VR360 Players". inTRAlinea, volume 24. https://www.intralinea.org/print/article/2585. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
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