If you have wanted the Daydream VR then you would know that it is not compatible with all phones. There are a few requirements that are needed for a phone to be Daydream compatible.
The developers have made sure to include phones that would display VR content without any stuttering or any disturbances avoiding VR motion sickness.
However, if you still want to experience VR with the Google Daydream then there might be a way you can do that, however, we would recommend not to do it often and it should just be done for an experimental purpose.
Viewing VR in a non-compatible phone can give you motion sickness and other issues so do not consider this as a permanent solution rather this should be something you might do for fun.
So before getting started, let’s discuss the requirements for being a Daydream compatible phone-
1. Bluetooth 4.2 LE
2. 1080p Resolution and 60 Hz display
3. 60 FPS rendering
4. Temperature sensors
5. OpenGL ES 3.2 and Vulkan
Honestly, it can be a little confusing to figure out if a phone has all the capabilities mentioned above so to make it simpler, any phone that has been released in the past 1 or 2 years is going to be having all the above features.
Before proceeding, make sure that you are confident about doing this and your phone does have all the requirements that are mentioned above.
If your phone doesn’t have any of these then please do not go any further and just get yourself a Merge VR or a Homido V2 and enjoy the VR experience.
Let’s get started
A few points that you might want to consider before doing the changes to your phone are-
1. Make sure that your phone is running on Android 7.0 or higher. In the case, it is not then you better abort this mission as things are not going to turn out that well with the phone.
2. You need to have root access and in the case, you are not sure on how to work with it then it is best that you do your bit of the research, get comfortable with working on it and then do the changes on your phone.
3. Now, you need to do is install the latest version of the Google Daydream Official app and once you are done with that go ahead and install the Root Explorer app from the PlayStore as well.
Now once you are done with this, we need to head over to the next part where we are going to make a few changes in your phone system.
These are going to be about editing some code and adding tags to make sure that you are doing it right without any disturbances around you.
1. Find this- /system/etc/permissions/handheld_core_hardware.xml and click on the edit option.
2. Now you need to locate root permissions and add <feature name=”android.software.vr.mode” /> <feature name=”android.hardware.vr.high_performance” /> tags.
3. Once you have done adding, recheck the tags and then you have to restart your phone.
4. Launch the Daydream app and place it inside the VR headset.
Basically, this code ensures that the Daydream VR app finds the necessary code that it looks for in a Daydream VR compatible phone. By inserting the tags you are replicating the code and making it seem like the phone is Daydream compatible.
However, once you have started using the Daydream VR app, you might want to delete the root access tags that you have added as it might hinder the normal functioning of your phone.
Not only does it affect the normal functioning of the phone but it might also put the security of the phone at risk which is not a great idea. So delete them once you are done.
Another point that you should consider is that these are just a few tricks to get your phone functioning like a Daydream compatible phone and you cannot consider the experience to be as good as it would be on an actual Daydream compatible phone.
In the case, you are interested in actually getting the best experience then you might want to get a Daydream compatible phone but till this way should work just fine.
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