Alejandro Quan-Madrid- Launch Pad Week 1: VR de los Muertos

Hi everyone! For my project, I'm making an interactive Dia de los Muertos shrine (something like the above pic) in VR that will come to life as you look at it. So far development has been super slow since I've spent most of my time and energy troubleshooting the hardware. 

I'm pretty sure the Samsung Galaxy S6 phone I got from the Launch Pad program is a lemon. :-(

1. Connecting the S6 to Gear VR doesn't work. When I plug the phone in, the screen turns black with a white x in the corner. Dozens of internet forums let me know that I'm not the only one experiencing this, but no one else's solutions seem to work for me. It looks like the phone rapidly connects and disconnects when plugged in to the Gear VR. It never goes to the content. When I unplug it stays stuck on the black screen and I have to hard reset the device (hold Power + Volume Down buttons for ~ 5 sec, FYI). 

So far, I've tried:

• Turning the phone off and on again. ;-) 
• Uninstalling/reinstalling the Gear VR app. It wigged out a bit when I plugged it in to the Gear, the voice kept saying, and repeating/interrupting itself to unplug and install the app. So I did, and then trying to plug in again still gets the non-connecting problem. 
• Factory Reset
• Updating every app
• Physically moving the S6 around inside the Gear to see if the connection was loose. 
• Cleaning out the USB connection on the S6 with compressed air
• Using my S6 with other peoples' Gear VRs doesn't work, but other phones work on my Gear VR. 
• Loading the Gear VR app first and then plugging it in to Gear when prompted

And nothing works. It charges OK and I've watched some 360 YouTube videos, but that's about it. 

2. Connecting the S6 to my Mac Book Pro laptop doesn't work.  So then I thought, maybe it's just something with the Gear and S6 talking to each other. And I can still make stuff in Unity. But of course I would need to get my computer and the phone to talk. I plugged it in and it charges, so that's something! I downloaded the OVR SDK Mobile, I have Java installed, I have the right versions of Android SDK files installed, etc. But Android File Transfer says please connect an Android device. Trying to Build & Run a simple scene from Unity also says please connect an Android Device.

I've tried:

• Making sure USB debugging mode is enabled on the device
• 4 different USB cables
• Installing and running Kies / Smart Switch
• Uninstalling Kies Smart Switch since Android File Transfer is not supposed to work if those are installed.
• Making sure MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) mode is selected on the phone (accessed this by "calling" *#0808# on the S6 since no USB options were showing up in Settings > Storage where they should be. 

And none of those things worked. When I plugged Aliah's S6 and another friend's S6 into my computer though (all with the same version of Android, 5.1.1), those started talking immediately. My phone doesn't talk to her computer though. All of this just leads me to believe that something is wrong with the USB connector on my phone. It charges, but doesn't connect to anything in a smart way. 

3. What I WAS able to do though was take some VR photos using the Cardboard Camera app on a recent trip to Ojai, CA. I then sent the photo to myself and placed it on a Sphere in Unity. By tweaking the shader on the sphere a little bit, we can map the photo to the inside of sphere and place a camera inside. Now we have a little world we can look around in:

Outside of the sphere looks like this.

The image looks distorted though. I tried stretching the sphere, which made it look a little better. I wonder if it would fix the warping with the warping that comes from a VR headset lenses...but I can't try it since I can't connect the S6 to my laptop to export the file! 

Hopefully Oculus and I can figure out a solution to this issue so I don't miss out on too much more development time. I haven't heard back from Amy yet, but I'm sure she's just busy or maybe my emails are getting lost in a spam filter.