GVRSDK vs. GVRKit. When to use each one for 3D VR Video?

Question

I just recently got started with he Google Cardboard SDK for iOS and I'm looking to create an simple app in Swift that displays a 3D (Stereoscopic) VR video.

First, I adapted the VideoWidgetDemo Sample in the SDK (https://github.com/googlevr/gvr-ios-sdk/tree/master/Samples/VideoWidgetDemo) from its original Objective C to Swift 4 and it performs well. It uses GVRKit to create a GVRSceneRenderer with a GVRVideoRenderer.

But then I came across a blog post on the Ray Wenderlich site (https://www.raywenderlich.com/136692/introduction-google-cardboard-ios) that uses GVRSDK's GVRVideoView instead, which feels simpler and easier to use. However, there is a very noticeable performance difference. The video displayed by this app stutters/jitters much more than the GVRKit version.

I'm puzzled by the fact that the official Google VR reference documentation site (https://developers.google.com/vr/ios/reference/) doesn't even mention GVRKit, even though all the official samples from the GitHub repo use it instead of GVRSDK. So the samples follow one approach and the reference docs cover a different one.

I haven't been able to find any guidance for when to use one or the other (or even both together if it makes sense), so I'm hoping that someone on StackOverflow can shed some light on this choice.

I'm also curios about the performance difference I'm experiencing with the two different approaches. It would be great if there is a way to achieve the same level of performance with the GVRVideoView than with the GVRVideoRenderer.

Thanks in advance for your insights and suggestions.

Answer 1

It seems that Google came up with a new SDK because Daydream is now deprecated.

The Google Cardboard SDK offers a streamlined API, improved device compatibility, and built-in viewer profile QR code scanning.

Quickstart : https://developers.google.com/cardboard/develop/ios/quickstart

Github : https://github.com/googlevr/cardboard

Answer 2

Seem that the SDK is deprecated. I've posted an issue about a GVRSDK on GitHub, and they say that the SDK is deprecated and developer have to switch to GVRKIT.

Here the GitHub issue: https://github.com/googlevr/gvr-ios-sdk/issues/298

If your goal is to display 360 video in a simple app, check this Cordova plugin: https://codecanyon.net/item/cordova-ionic-vr-plugin-photo-360-video-360-player-with-cardboard/20392357