Getting Unity to recognize THETA UVC FullHD Blender Camera

I didn’t have an entry in the registry where you mentioned. I realized that was because I installed the 32 bit version by mistake. I installed the 64 bit version and now it works.

Thanks for your help!

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I love a happy ending

Rock on! Share your application. Would love to see what people are doing.

Thanks for the report on the 32 bit version. Every bit added to the knowledge pool helps others.

Did you need to install the 64bit version of Unity or the 64bit version of Windows?

I’d love to share it, but it’s for a client. Right now it doesn’t look that different from yours anyway.

I had the 64 bit of Unity and Windows 10 before. My mistake was installing the 32 bit version of the Theta drivers. I must’ve clicked the wrong link somehow.

Thanks for all your help. This will make my client very happy!

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Hello all,

I am trying to get a live stream from a RICOH Theta S (1080i/30fps) HDMI signal on a Dell Intel® Core™ i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz, which has no HDMI-in port, so I can display 360 livestream videos from the camera to Unity, and then get it on an Oculus Rift. I managed to get the stream via the USB cable, but well, I need some range, so I aim to use a video transmitter.

To sum up, I’m trying to find a PCIe card to send this stream from a RICOH Theta S camera to an Oculus rift via HDMI with Unity.

The goal would be to get images from a race car on a circuit to send it into a VR headset.

Is there any already existing hardware/software solution that allows me to send this stream to Unity ?

I am looking forward to finding a solution with you.
Regards, Lucas BLANC-GARIN

The solution above is probably too expensive. Maybe it’s possible to rent it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSHW30iokpw

If you’ve got the stream on your laptop already, you might be able to stream the entire desktop to a mobile phone.

See this article

This is as far as I got. I’m still trying to figure out what type of application to build with this. It’s cool to play with. :slight_smile:

Hello,

The Streambox would allow me to send a 360 live stream to YouTube or Periscope.
Would it allow me to get the stream to Unity ?

I’m currently looking for a card like that to succeed in doing it :
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/products/decklink/techspecs/W-DLK-33

I’m trying to get it right talking with Blackmagic Design Sales, who asks me :
"It would be worth confirming with RICOH that it does output a progressive signal and not a 1080 60I with a frame conversion.

I would also point out that the RICOH could output a coded signal over the HDMI so that may also cause you an issue. That would be a question for Unity.

With regards to Unity I’ve had a look at their site but cannot find the machine configuration guide so it would be worth giving them a shout. Unfortunately I’ve not used their software so cannot state if it works with our cards."

I’m still waiting for an answer from Unity though.

Regards,
Lucas BLANC-GARIN

There is specifications on the camera here:

HDMI Live Streaming Specifications (RICOH THETA S only)
Dual-Fisheye data in uncompressed YCbCr format is output.

Image size: 1920x1080 / 1280x720 / 720x480

Frame rate: 30fps

Note that the output of the HDMI is dual-fisheye. You’ll still need a way to stitch it into a sphere.

Megan Zimmer wrote a tutorial on using SteamVR. She’s using an HTC Vive, not a Oculus Rift.

I don’t quite understand your setup. Is the headset directly connected to the laptop with HDMI and USB cables? If not, how are you transmitting the signal from the laptop to the headset?

Most people I know are using the USB output of the THETA to get the video into Unity.

Ricoh used LiveShell with their live streaming demo at CES using the Ricoh R Dev Kit.

The headset is connected to the computer using HDMI and USB cables.

I am able to get the video into Unity via the USB output of the Theta.
The thing is that I want to get the stream from the camera that I’d put in a car, so I can’t really use the USB port to link the camera to the computer.
As a consequence, I’d like to use a video transmitter (that I already own), which sends me the HDMI output from afar. The point is that I don’t really know if I could get the stream on Unity using this system.

From the video transmitter that is inside the race car, is there some type of receiver on the computer that is connected to the headset? The video stream that the computer is receiving would need to look like a USB webcam to Unity.

This seems like a difficult application. I don’t know much about streaming videos between two computers, but, you’d need to verify that the receiving computer an take an incoming signal and then make it appear like a normal webcam.

You’d need to run through a script and verify that the stream is detected as a camera.

There may be other techniques to stream to a headset that I’m not aware of.

Hi, I’ve discovered another issue. While I’m getting the UVC FullHD Blender to work within Unity, when I build my application and run it externally, I’m getting the 'Can’t load video device" error again.

I’ve tried my app in admin mode as well, still an issue. If I use the raw video feed, however, it works. The virtual cams appear to fail when running an app outside of Unity.

Has anyone else had this issue?

I am a bit of a newbie with Unity but I have a question. If I develop an app with the tutorial you’ve shown, will the user of my app also have to change the Registery of their computers? or will it work without it. And what else will the users have to do in order to make it work in the final application. Also Will it run on Mac OS-X?

This is an old tutorial for the THETA S. The new camera is for the THETA V. We’re still having some problems getting the THETA V to work with Unity for live streaming.

The technique described with the THETA S will not result in a usable end-user app. At least, I don’t think so. It’s for development and has only been tested inside of the Unity development environment. If you have a THETA S and want to produce end-user applications, you can stitch it yourself. See the tutorial below.

Do you have a THETA V or a THETA S?

Hi,

You can stream the ricoh theta video from the hdmi port connected to a hdmi to h264 encoder box. That will stream the signal using rtmp url.
In unity you buy the rtmp video player on assetstore called MPMP ,in the demo package you can find a sample scene with a 360 video, i try it and put in the path video, a rtmp sample video stream and that work.
So i get i video playing in the sphere ,then i i recreate same scene with cardboard sdk and try it on my phone and that work too. I think this is the unity plugin that could help you achieve this.

Regards.

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This is great info. Did you try it with MPMP, which goes for $90? Or, did you try it with MPMP VLC, which goes for $30?

Demo version of both are available with watermark.

Also, have you used this with an IP address? I think I can get the THETA V plug-in technology to live stream video using Wi-Fi or Ethernet to rtmp servers like YouTube Live Events. I’d like to eventually stream it to something like an HTC Vive Headset or Oculus Go using the Internet.

They have a nice video demo here:

Hey everyone. I know this post is older, but has anyone found a way to stream the new Ricoh Z1 in Unity (as a webcam or other way)? It works fine as a capture device in MPC-HC, but not in Unity. I tried all the hacks above, but they unfortunately don’t work.

It does find the camera in Unity while debugging and looping through all available webcams on the system, but when I play the scene it gives me an error:

Could not connect pins - RenderStream()
UnityEngine.WebCamTexture:Play()

I got same error , still struggling

Hi,

I’m trying to livestream from Z1 to Unity via OBS. The output from OBS is being detected by Unity because I can see the OBS logo as the texture. However, the minute I turn on the Start Virtual Camera button in OBS, the texture in Unity just turns black. I have the Ricoh Theta driver (1.0) since that was recommended in one of the older posts in the forum. I have the latest version of OBS (29.0) and Unity 2021.3.16f. Even followed the registry hack and changed the DevicePath name to “foo:bar”.

Does anyone have have any solution?