Building and using XR Player on Android

This guide covers compiling the XR player Unity project for Android and configuring it with specific glTF content.

Mobile XR refers to augmented or mixed reality applications running on handheld devices such as smartphones.

This section assumes adb is installed on the machine, and an Android smartphone with developer options and USB debugging enabled is connected.

The project requires Unity 3D 2022.3 with Android and iOS support modules installed.

1. Get the source code

Clone the XR Player unity project code:

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

Clone the media pipelines source code:

git clone git@github.com:5G-MAG/rt-xr-maf-native.git

2. Build and install media pipeline plugins

When targeting android, the easiest way to build and install media pipelines is by using the .Dockerfile in the rt-xr-unity-package. The dockerfile build steps setup the build environment, then build the media pipeline and all of their dependencies, so that the build artifacts are stored in the resulting container:

cd rt-xr-maf-native
docker build -t rtxrmaf:builder .

The build artifacts can then be copied from the container to the unity project:

cd rt-xr-unity-player
docker run --mount=type=bind,source=$(pwd)/Packages/rt.xr.maf,target=/install -it maf:builder

Now the unity project contains all dependencies to support media pipelines.

Compiling media pipelines without Docker

Refer to the media pipeline’s git repository for more informations on the build process.

3. Build the project & install the unity project on an Android device

Build the Unity project for Android

  1. Locate the File > Build Settings menu
  2. Make sure that Android is the selected platform, Switch Platform if needed
  3. Ensure that XRScene is the default scene
  4. Select the device on which the application will be installed
  5. Hit Build and Run to compile the project and install it on the mobile device

4. Push content to an Android device & configure the player

Clone the rt-xr-content repository. This requires git lfs to be installed on your system.

git clone https://github.com/5G-MAG/rt-xr-content.git

Push glTF content to the phone:

cd rt-xr-content
adb push ./awards /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.fivegmag.rtxrplayer/files/awards

Create a file named ‘Paths’ listing gltf documents to be exposed in the player, one per line:

/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.fivegmag.rtxrplayer/files/awards/awards.gltf
/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.fivegmag.rtxrplayer/files/awards/awards_floor_anchoring.gltf

Upload the ‘Paths’ file to the Android device:

adb push ./Paths /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.fivegmag.rtxrplayer/files/Paths

5. Launch the player

Locate and launch the player. A menu to select scenes in the configured content will be listed by the player at startup.

android icon

content selection menu