Nreal Air 3D player released (testing Nebula 3.3.0)

When I first saw on Youtube that there was a pair of AR (Augmented Reality) with OLED I immediately ordered one. My glasses arrived in October and really fast. The quality for once is really there and 2D movies or shows with your phone is amazing! Specially on the go (if you travel a lot like me) or just in the before going to bed. Seriously no screen door effect like VR, the colours and vibrance just pop just like you would expect with OLED. But there was a but… : where is the 3D player option?
What? No 3D player for side by side content or 180 3D contents??? Let’s be honest here; no way to watch adult content like we all do with our VR headsets. Okay, I started to panic! I signed up on the Nreal forum, complained a bit and one the admin replied it was coming. The thread was almost a year old, but at least they were replying to our concerns.
Good news! Today there is hope! Not just Nreal released a testing version that you can get on their Discord (or here : Download Nebula V3.3.0 Test 3D), but Jakedown released a VLC forks named VLC3D that supports 3D movies and 3D SBS. You got to get the new version (0.05l) from its Patreon or Discord. It’s more complete than the Nreal player for now. I must say he did a really good job! It’s not 100% finished and polished, but it’s working for the most part and it’s easy to use.
As for the 3D player in Nebula, it’s working but with missing features and some bugs that people and myself are reporting. Some of them (as of writing);
- Audio track cannot be chose (so you can end up playing a movie with Director’s cuts with no options to select the track that you want)
- Can’t access content from your SD card (if you have a phone that supports it like mine)
- No Youtube 3D support yet
- No fixed options, so when your head moves, it will be black until you turn your head back
- Cannot delete the playlist
Nreal is doing a good job with good progress here but Jakedown (click here to reach its Github page) is winning the race so far. He starts from a good foundation where VLC is a pretty complete open source player and playback almost every formats. I think this will become what people in the community will adopt in the long run.
Nreal is also working on a firmware update that should unleash the power of these glasses; a 3D mode! With this feature, you will be able to plug to a computer just like you do with VR and likely be able to play 3D games or other 3D contents.