Tutorial - V3C Unity Player for Android with DASH Streaming Server

Introduction

This tutorials provides the instructions to setup the V3C Immersive Platform for an Android device using content streamed from a DASH server.

Step 0: Setting up the environment

We are doing the installation and building the platform in Windows. The target device to install the apk with the Unity Player will be an Android phone (in this example a Samsung S21).

As indicated in the instructions in the rt-v3c-unity-player, we will use Unity 6000.0.25f1. We recommend downloding Unity Hub and select the version of Unity to install, which can also be downloaded from here: https://unity.com/releases/editor/whats-new/6000.0.51

As indicated in the instructions in the rt-v3c-decoder-plugin, we will also need:

Step 1: Clone the Unity Player Repository 

git clone https://github.com/5G-MAG/rt-v3c-unity-player

Although not immerdiately used, this will create the directories where the decoder plugin files will be copied.

Step 2: Install the Decoder Plugin

Clone the repository:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/5G-MAG/rt-v3c-decoder-plugin.git

Install the dependencies:

cd rt-v3c-decoder-plugin
./Scripts/dl_deps.sh

Add the additional dependency regarding avcodec libraries. For this, instructions are provided in rt-common-shared. We can use the Docker build instructions with Git Bash.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/5G-MAG/rt-common-shared.git
cd rt-common-shared/avcodec-build/
docker build -t ffmpeg-builder:27 --build-arg NDK_VERSION=27.2.12479018 .
docker run -v /$(PWD)/build/ffmpeg/aarch64:/usr/build/ffmpeg --env TARGET_ABI=aarch64 --env ANDROID_API_LEVEL=35 ffmpeg-builder:27

In Windows, the build artifacts can be found in your user folder .\build\ffmpeg\aarch64.

As we are targeting an Android device, once compiled, the .so libraries from the build artifacts’ lib directory can be included into the ./External/avcodec/7.1/Android/arm64-v8a/lib directory of the rt-v3c-unity-player.

At this point, back in the directory of the rt-v3c-decoder-plugin, we can compile for Android:

cd rt-v3c-decoder-plugin
./Scripts/build_android.sh release all

We can now copy the plugins into the rt-v3c-unity-player directories:

cd rt-v3c-unity-player
../rt-v3c-decoder-plugin/Scripts/copy_libs.sh ./Packages/V3CDecoder/Runtime/Plugins release Android

Step 3: Building the Unity Player for Android

In Unity Hub, import the “rt-v3c-unity-player/V3CImmersiveTest” project. Make sure that the scene V3C-Simple Player.unity is loaded.

Go to File->Build Settings (or Ctrl+Shift+B), select the Android target and select either Build or Build and Run.

Unity will generate a .apk file that you can copy and install on your phone. To use the Build&Run feature, you will need to activate the Debug through USB feature on your device (requires developper mode).

Note that you will need to manually install the content and/or configuration files on your device. Run the application once on your device to ensure the creation of the folder.

Step 4: Importing configuration files

With the application already installed in the Android device and the directories automatically created we can now download the V3C Content for testing locally in the device and for streaming.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/5G-MAG/rt-v3c-content.git

The content of the folder “on-device-data” can be copied into the device (in our case: “\Internal storage\Android\data\com.InterDigital.V3CSimplePlayer\files”).

Step 5: Setting up a DASH streaming server

Before copying the content in the device, you can modify the config.json file to insert the IP address of the machine hosting the DASH server and the port.

We recommend using the simple express server available in https://github.com/5G-MAG/rt-common-shared/.

Just install the server following the instructions copy the content of the “on-server-data” inside the public folder of the DASH server. Make sure to unzip the packages containing the segments and mpd for each test sequence.

Streaming can be started from the Unity player.