Beyond The Factory Apps
There are Google Cardboard games and games you have on your PC. Most Gear VR people want to play everything. It is possible in many cases. You’ll need to put on your ‘I’m-a-geek’ hat and fire up Google. For the Gear VR 2017 do your searches for tutorials using ‘2017’ in the search or use Google tools to limit your searches to the last year. I’ll go through what I’ve just got to work (6/2017).
PC Games
The article you’ll likely find that most refer to is How to play PC games with your Samsung Gear VR by Mark Schramm. Lots articles refer to this app. It is a bit old. As best I can tell it was originally written for Gear VR 2016. It works. But, you may have to fiddle your way through it. Please donate to keep Mark’s site running.
Be warned. This is an app for NVIDIA users. It depends on NVIDIA’s Game Stream. Without NVIDIA, you’re sort of screwed. I suppose AMD has something… I’m having enough trouble figuring out how to use what I’ve got.
Mark’s article is about using SideloadVR. You can get the app from the Google Play Store. It then needs to download Stream Theater, which is not a Google Play app. So, you have to enable loading apps from unknown sources. That is a bit risky. But, if the Stream Theater was hacker software we would have heard about by now. So, I have it installed and no disasters.
To allow the Unknown Sources option:
S8 Steps
- Open Settings
- Notice the magnifying Glass in the upper right, touch it.
- Search using the word ‘Unknown’ … no quotes, case not important.
- The result is a link to Unknown Sources. Touch to open.
Not to worry. This setting keeps disabling itself. You’ll probably have to enable it a couple of times just to get Stream Theater installed.
When I searched for the Stream Theater app (step 3 in Mark’s article) as directed in the article, SideLoadVR would crash. To get around that pain I selected ‘Most Downloaded’ from the SideloadVR Alpha store’s home page, in Categories. You should see it. Touch and you’re on your way to download and install.
ALSO… you may see Theater pop by in SideloadVR’s Featured Apps as the pages main images/links. Either will download the Theater app.
You will likely have to go back into Unknown Sources and re-enable that again to complete the installation.
You may have problems with the PIN Code that must be entered in Stream Theater on the PC side. If so, see: Play PC games in your Samsung Gear VR. If you do have a problem, scroll to the bottom of the article for a workaround. I didn’t have that problem with my Win-10 and S8.
More page links below…
You gotta try ye olde CtrAltStudio in Oculus mode next!, It ought to be in 3d since it’s doing spherical-mapped side-by-side which isn’t native to either the Nvidia or AMD solutions.
Thanks for writing this. Keep the world posted. I was really excited when I heard you can connect GearVR to a PC. Kind of knew it was too good to be true, otherwise more people would be doing it I think. I did buy a second hand GearVR so hoping it doesnt take too much effort.
It is a bit of a PITA. There is a lot of old information you have to find your way past.
Galaxy S8 does not have a 4K screen, I have no idea where you read that. Also, a lot of people I know hadn’t noticed a difference in battery life with lowering the resolution, and in a lot of cases, it can make the device run slower due to the fact that the GPU needs to scale things up and down accordingly. On some apps, things are just outright broken too, because most apps go by your actual display resolution, not software resolution.
There is also a massive difference in the 2960×1440 vs anything lower. Especially in how much screen real estate you have.
this is the only guy that has a 4k s8 lol