Opera adds a shortcut to push videos straight to VR headsets
No need to download videos nor fiddle with a VR video player.
While Google's Chrome team has been busy working on VR web browsing, Opera decided to focus on solving one particular pain point: switching online videos between desktop browsers and VR headsets. Today, you can finally get a taste of Opera's solution via its Developer 49 build. Basically, as long as there's a VR headset plugged into your Windows, macOS or Linux PC, this Opera build will show a "Watch in VR" button at the top of any video -- be it a normal clip, a 180-degree video or the full 360 video. Just click the button and the same video will show up on your VR headset right away. It's as simple as that.
Right now, Opera's support for VR video playback is confirmed for YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo, but you can use the same feature to watch any normal clip through your headset -- as if you're in a personal movie theater. Regardless of the type of video, this easily beats downloading a clip and then launching a VR video player to open it. As for VR hardware, this feature works with HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, OSVR HDK2 plus other OpenVR headsets. Obviously, make sure your headset is already connected and on standby in the first place.
Given that this is a developer build, Opera is still ironing out kinks here and there before pushing this to beta, but keen enthusiasts can already grab a copy and give it a go.
