Video Player components

You can use either of two components to display video content on visionOS with PolySpatial:

Although either component can play video on visionOS, each component has advantages and disadvantages to consider.

VisionOSVideoComponent

In order to support video content on visionOS, PolySpatial currently includes a custom VisionOSVideoComponent. To use it, add the component to a GameObject and set its properties. The Target Material Renderer property identifies the MeshRenderer that will display the video content. Any MeshRenderer can be used. The Clip property identifies the Video Clip asset that you want to play, such as an .mp4.

A limitation of the current system is that the clip must be manually copied into a ../StreamingAssets/VisionOSVideoClips/ folder to display and render properly on visionOS. This folder must be relative from the project folder - for example, the full folder path may be Assets/StreamingAssets/VisionOSVideoClips/. Create this folder if it does not exist. Ensure that the clip is not just moved into this folder, but copied into it, so that there are two instances of it - one referenced by the VisionOSVideoComponent and one under the StreamingAssets folder. Refer to Special folder names and Streaming Assets for more information about the Unity StreamingAssets folder.

Refer to Unity documentation on the StreamingAssets folder for more information.

VisionOSVideoComponent

The VisionOSVideoComponent component exposes the following properties:

Property Description
TargetMaterialRenderer Reference to the MeshRenderer on which the video should render. The video will overwrite the current material on that MeshRenderer.
Clip The video asset to be played.
IsLooping Whether the video should repeat when playback reaches the end of the clip.
PlayOnAwake Whether the video should start playing when Awake() is called.
Mute When true, audio playback is suppressed; when false, the volume value is respected.
Volume The current volume of audio playback for the clip, ranging between 0 and 1.

At runtime, you can use the following methods to control video playback:

Method Description
GetState() Get current state of the video player.
Play() Starts playback.
Stop() Stops the playback and sets the current playback time to 0.
Pause() Pauses the playback and leaves the current playback time intact.
GetDirectAudioMute() Get the direct-output audio mute status for the specified track - note that currently only track index 0 works.
SetDirectAudioMute() Set the direct-output audio mute status for the specified track - note that currently only track index 0 works.
GetDirectAudioVolume() Get the direct-output audio volume for the specified track - note that currently only track index 0 works.
SetDirectAudioVolume() Set the direct-output audio volume for the specified track - note that currently only track index 0 works.

Unity Video Player support

You can use Unity's default VideoPlayer component to play video on visionOS with Unity Editor version 2022.3.18f1 and above. To use this component with PolySpatial you must:

  • Set the VideoPlayer Render Mode to Render Texture, and then supply the video player with a RenderTexture as a target texture.
  • Apply this render texture to a material, and apply the material to a renderer as normal.
  • Add a script that will call PolySpatialObjectUtils.MarkDirty() on the render texture attached to the VideoPlayer. This PolySpatialObjectUtils.MarkDirty() call should be called once per frame. Refer to the RenderTexture documentation for more information on manually dirtying RenderTextures.

Setting the Render Mode property on the VideoPlayer component to anything but Render Texture will result in a warning and the VideoPlayer will not render anything.

Video Player vs VisionOS Video Component

There are tradeoffs that come with choosing one video component over the other.

The VisionOSVideoComponent utilizes visionOS's native video player to display and render video, allowing it display video in a performant manner. However, the public API for this component is much more limited than that of the normal VideoPlayer component, and more complex video player functionality (such as Events and Delegates) cannot be used with it. Additionally, because the video texture is created in visionOS, there is no access to that video texture through Unity. Additionally, the VisionOSVideoComponent will not work with debugging tools like PlayToDevice.

Using the normal VideoPlayer component comes with performance costs, because it must update the render texture each frame, but has the advantage of being able to utilize all of the Unity Video Player's extensive methods, events, and delegates. Additionally, you have access to the video texture and can use it like any other texture - for example, using it in a shader graph material. Using the normal VideoPlayer component also allows streaming over a network, and works with Play To Device.