Develop Reference

Alternative for VrPanoramaView since it is deprecated

I would like to built a small app that shows a panorama 360º image with head tracking on Android. I quickly stumbled upon com.google.vr.sdk.widgets.pano.VrPanoramaView (https://developers.google.com/vr/develop/android/vrview). But there is a big disclaimer on top:
This site has been archived and remains strictly as a historical reference for developers who actively maintain apps built using the legacy Google VR SDK, which was last updated in 2019 and is no longer receiving updates. All developers actively developing experiences for Google Cardboard should use the new open source Cardboard SDKs for iOS, Android NDK, and Unity XR Plugin.
So clicking the link to the new Cardboard SDK I ended up here: https://developers.google.com/cardboard/develop/c/quickstart
Which shows a game like environment in stereo VR. Super cool in its own right, but it isn't a replacement for VrPanoramaView. And the newer SDKs for Android do not support VrPanoramaView anymore.
Also, I could not find an example on the new Cardboard SDK site how to built a 'simple' VR image 360º panorama viewer with headtracking.
Googling a bit more I found that people said there is no alternative for the deprecated panorama VR viewer, which I find hard to understand. The VrPanoramaView seemed pretty simple and elegant in its use, whereas going full blown C++ with matrices and all for lens distortion seems like pretty hard core to deal with to me. Compare all that C++ code to this much simpeler code example: https://youtu.be/gnDa-fvEyUk?t=471
Is there an out-of-the-box VR 360º image viewer that supports stereo? Or how could I use the new Cardboard SDK and built something similar?

Is it possible to embed a Unity game into a Flutter app?

I am creating an app that will require small mini-games as a menu option, and I have created these games in Unity. Ideally, I would like to embed these games into a Flutter project. I have seen tutorials on doing this with Java and Android Studio, and I need to make a decision on which platform I will be using for my internship project. I have several questions about the SDK, but I have posted them separately to keep the answers distinct (and help filter out the noise for anyone searching for these specific answers), and this is one of my main questions.
Specifically, I am following this guide: https://medium.com/#davidbeloosesky/embedded-unity-within-android-app-7061f4f473a
for Android Studio, and was wondering if something similar was possible with Flutter. I am also using Android Studio as my IDE for Flutter, but need to decide if I should stick with Java, or switch to Dart and Flutter (which actually works much better for specific UI elements I need).
If not, is there another way to package a Unity project and a Flutter application together?

You can imagine the whole Flutter app to be rendered on one view of the final native application. It can coexist with native views. So it should definitely be possible to display a native Android/iOS view with Unity content and trigger that from Flutter.
Create a Flutter project and open the Android native part of it (right click the android folder in Android Studio, choose Flutter -> Open Android module).
Create a native Android view there and use platform channels to display it.
Add Unity content to the native view.
https://flutter.io/platform-channels/

As of May 2022, I would like to share an updated information for mobile app developers who are researching this interesting issue. The reason I'm writing this answer is because there was so many development tasks that need to be done before I get the right answer to the above question. A developer researching this subject should work in both Unity, Android Studio and Xcode in order to find a definitive answer to his/her question, and should also know how to develop mobile apps with Flutter. Honestly, if everything had not gone well, my long time development works might have been wasted. In addition to my answer, I would like to give also positive news on the side of Augmented Reality developers who are using Vuforia and investigating the same issue.
Using the magnificent https://github.com/juicycleff/flutter-unity-view-widget repo; in your mobile app developed with Flutter, you can run the game you developed with Unity or the AR app you developed with Unity + Vuforia. You can use the app you developed with Unity, in the Flutter App you developed. They can also communicate each other in the Flutter App. You can pass parameters from your Flutter App to your Unity application in the Flutter App, and you can also pass parameters from your Unity application to the Flutter App. This means, you can pass parameters from your Flutter App's Dart code to the C# code of your Unity work and vice versa. For those who develop AR Apps with Vuforia, I would like to point out that for the scenario I am working on, I use Image Targets. I have same experience on the phone, with the Unity APK and Android Studio APK, they are in the same stability. Of course APK sizes are different, Flutter App APK size is of course bigger than Unity APK, but in my case this is absolutely ok.
As of May 2022, the answer to the above question is: Yes, you can. Moreover, for those who develop AR Apps in Unity using Vuforia, the answer is also: Yes, you can. I wish success to everyone who will start working in this scenario. Since it is a detailed subject, some difficulties are waiting for you on the way, but if you can see that the product you dream to achieve will be a stable Flutter App, with all the nice features, I am sure that you will find the enough motivation to bring all of them together. Good luck.

Differences in developing for IOS and Android (Unity)

I am planning to develop a game both for Android and for IOS. My engine of choice is Unity as it is supposed to support both OSs. Is there going to be any difference at all in the development phase? For example, should I consider the OS in things like storing data like high score, or in things like input type? Or does unity provide an abstraction level for these things, and takes care of everything in the build phase?

Once you make a game in unity you can deploy that on many platform without doing any significant changes. However there will be sometime when you will need some part of your code only run on some specific platform, which you can do like this. Regarding saving data, this may depend on how you want to implement things in your code. You can use playerpref which is supported on all platforms or you can use third party sdk. I think this may have cleared your doubt.

A quote from the Unity website:
There are so many platforms you can deploy to with the Unity game engine, and their number is growing all the time. Build your content once and deploy at a click across all major mobile, desktop and console platforms plus the Web. Use the official Facebook SDK for Unity to integrate cross-platform games with ease, experiment with the Oculus Rift and more.

Limitations of Video Capture in Phone Gap + Native Plugins

I am developing a mobile app targeting the iOS and Android platforms. The app will consist of:
A relatively simple 'user login/signup and listing of database items' type of interface, powered by an already built webservice from and existing web application.
A video capture and upload feature using native plugins.
I have done extensive research on PhoneGap for the last week, and have determined that even considering the well documented issues and limitations of PhoneGap, it is well suited for the 1st part of my app.
However, given the limitations of the PhoneGap Capture API ( org.apache.cordova.media-capture ), it is not appropriate for capturing video for upload, mostly due to the lack of control over video specs. (On most devices, video captures will be enormous HD files that are not suitable for upload, even on Wifi, and certainly not over 3g/4g.)
Given my resources and timeline, I've determined that building native apps in both Java and ObjC are impractical, at least for now. I have very little ObjC and Java experience, but I am fairly confident and eager to learn these languages if need be.
That said, I am considering 2 options:
The first, and probably most rational, is that I pick the platform with the greater market share of my existing user base (iOS), suck it up, and go native.
The second, and perhaps lofty option, is that I develop a hybrid app in PhoneGap, targeting both platforms, and circumvent the limitations of my video capture ability by building native plugins for Java and ObjC using PhoneGap's plugin API, thus reducing development time on the rest of the app, and using native code only where it's needed.
The requirements of my video capture plugin would be as follows:
Have complete control over the specs of the recorded video, most importantly resolution and bitrate. (Presumably with AVFoundation, and the like in Adroid SDK).
Control the user interface of the video capture functionality.
Obviously, I am aware that these tasks are very possible on both platforms when developing in the native api's as is evident by existing apps in the market. (Vine, etc..).
My real question, is what are the limitations, and issues with extending native functionality via PhoneGap's Plugin API? There are almost no examples of work done in PhoneGap with this level of native implementation of video capture. The one example I've found is this plugin, VideoCapturePlus, which although I haven't been able to get to work, seems promising.
I am especially interested to find out if anyone out there has successfully implemented native plugins in PhoneGap with this level of complexity, or if it is a rabbit hole I will wish I hadn't gone down.

I have essentially gotten to the bottom of this question, that I am sure others are and will face. I will address the topic in 3 parts:
Can I do [something] in PhoneGap (as opposed to in native iOS or Android SDK)?
This is a question I'd imagine many developers considering the PhoneGap framework find themselves asking, as did I. The short answer is YES, YOU PROBABLY CAN.
How do I do [something] in PhoneGap?
Plugins! Here's the rub: Cordova (PhoneGap) in all it's brilliance is extremely limited in the way it accesses native hardware features, especially when you get into video/photo/audio capture.
This is where plugins come in. There are thousands of PhoneGap plugins at this point. Many are as simple as 4 lines of Java and Objective C to get over some simple thing that PhoneGap just won't do. Others are large projects with lifecycles of their own.
In my case, it became very clear very early on that I was not going to be able to build my app with the video capture functions that existed in PhoneGap. That said, I went shopping for plugins. By the end of my project it had taken 2 plugins that extended video functionality and four more to do other small various things I needed. In a few cases, the plugins I found did not have everything I needed, and I wound up contributing bits of code. If the projects are active on GitHub, I highly recommend this.
In the end, there were things I wanted to do that I could not find plugins for. I still have plans to build some of my own, but am not there yet. Bottom line: Outside of gaming and other 3d rendering applications, you'll be hard pressed to find something that can't be achieved with a PhoneGap plugin.
For those interested specifically in video capture, these are the 2 plugins that got me over the hump in my project:
VideoCapturePlus
Video Screenshot
Should I build my app that does [something] in PhoneGap?
Of course, this question is up to each developer, and what the goals of the app are. In my case, a simple app that among other things captures and uploads photos and short videos was quite possible. There are certainly cases in which the parameters and goals of the app make it such that native development is the best option.
That said, for most solo devs or small teams with limited resources and little or no Java or ObjC experience, the answer to the question, "Should I consider PhoneGap?", would be [in my best Jim Halpert voice], "Absolutely you should". As an added bonus, I will say this: In my case, the HTML5 layouts, and much of the front end JS that were used for both the Android and iOS versions of my app are largely reusable for the mobile web version of my app. Being able to maintain a single codebase for those three things offers efficiency that even larger resourced organizations shouldn't overlook.

Moving from android to sencha-touch

I am creating an app on android but after hearing about sencha that it supports multiple platforms, so before choosing that i have some confusions about this framework. Please answer few questions
Will sencha apps will work only in web browsers? i.e. launching an app will open web browser first?
Android has built in database i.e. SQLite? does sancha supports it or has its own built in DBMS?
Can i use hardware features like camera(for barcode scanning)?
Does it support google maps
Is it possible to create homescreen widgets that runs on iphone,blackberry and android?
any help in this regard will be highly appreciated

Not too much information is available on the internet about Sencha Touch. Their latest version is Sencha Touch 2. I did explore that alternative a few months back (back then, they were still on version 1).
That being said, let me answer as many of your queries as I can.
Sencha Touch driven applications don't run in your web browser. They
run natively on each platform you design for. However, they make use
of the webkit engine integrated in you App. Therefore, launching you
App will not open a browser page but will run your application
(HTML5 by the way) within your App.
A preliminary search on their website has SQL Database mentioned. http://docs.sencha.com/touch/2-0/#!/api/Ext.feature.has-property-SqlDatabase. Not sure about how they integrate it. Perhaps a look into their SDK/ API and a few samples should clear that up. Alternatively, an I am just guessing here at this point, it might connect your website database, if one exists.
Harware features don't seem to be avialble at the moment. A quick look at their kitchnsink example should give you an idea of the components available for integration. http://dev.sencha.com/deploy/touch/examples/production/kitchensink/index.html
It does support Google Maps.
They do list an extension called WIDGET but the documnetation seems rather silent about functionality. Again, as mentioned earlier, a dive in to the SDK / API and a few examples might clear that up.
This here is their online Guide: http://docs.sencha.com/touch/2-0/#!/guide
And this is a page to their Examples: http://docs.sencha.com/touch/2-0/#!/example
I would still go ahead with Native App development as it gives you more flexibility over something like Sencha Touch.
Alternatively, if you would still like the one effort, multiple platform thingy, there are a few alternatives available.
http://www.phonegap.com/
http://www.appcelerator.com/
http://www.rhomobile.com/
Good luck with your app development. And I hope the info provided helps.... :-)