A place to discuss any and all things Virtual Reality. Hey VR Enthusiasts and maybe 3D movie lovers, sadly not many in the VR community have had the possibility to experience the wonder of watching full length high quality 3D movies in a VR headset, yet. Watching movies – especially 3D movies – in VR is currently still very underrated. But having your own virtual cinema with surround sound and a huge screen on which 3D movies pop even more than in an actual cinema is truly something magical to which I want to introduce more people to. Apps like bigscreen or even YouTube VR can be great to get a first impression of 3D content in a VR headset, but the quality and accessibility of 3D movies on these is very limited. Bigscreen only offers a small collection (at least my country) and these movies are relatively low quality (probably due to compression and lower bit depth) with only Half-SBS instead of Full-SBS, so only half the resolution. (Quick explanation for new 3D movie watchers: Full-SBS means that each view per eye is transmitted in full 1080p *S*ide *B*y *S*ide resulting in a resolution of 3840×1080 pixels; Half-SBS was introduced early on in 3D formatting to ensure compatibility with older file viewers and crams both views side by side on a pixel canvas of only 1920×1080 – so 960×1080 per eye -> only half the horizontal resolution of Full-SBS; There’s also Full-OU and Half-OU which are even less common and behave similarly to each other only that the views per eye are stacked *O*ver and *U*nder of each other and of which Full-OU is the better option resulting in a resolution of 1920×2160 compared to 1920×1080.) On YouTube VR there aren’t any full length movies, but the 3D Trailer to Avatar 2: The Way of Water by “3D Clips and Trailers” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8F_9T8hnPw) is a very good example of high quality 3D video content – so check that out with your VR headset and now imagine enjoying full length movies like that. And although during the short craze of 3D TVs and projectors some streaming services like Netflix had been offering 3D content, all of them pulled them out of their catalogue after the hype died down. So sadly at the moment there actually aren’t any easily accessible ways to find and enjoy high quality 3D movies in VR – and not even through other ways where people usually get their Linux and other ISOs… because the topic of “Full-SBS full length movies” is a VERY niche field of interest at the moment. The only way is ripping your own 3D Blu-rays with programs like MakeMKV and then converting the ripped ISO into a Full-SBS MKV-file. (Although at least Blu-ray ISOs are possible to find when you know where to search and even some Full-SBS conversions of them when you REALLY know where to look. Only some hints I could give would be searching for a particular “3D HD Club” and its hosts JFC and DGC and for folks familiar with Usenet to look up posters like SPRiNTER and especially B3holDer .) I had to do so much research across several different websites and forums over several months on how to convert 3D Blu-rays, because there was so little information out there. And then I have done multiple tests and benchmarks to find the perfect settings. So since there is such a lack of information about converting 3D Blu-rays and because I have already put in so much time and energy, I thought to myself:”why not compress all of that knowledge I have gathered into a post so new people interested in watching 3D movies in their VR headset can follow a step-by-step guide and don’t have to worry about hundreds of hours of research and tests”. So this is this exact post: get a 3D Blu-ray ISO file by either ripping a 3D Blu-ray yourself (here’s already a really good tutorial for it so I won’t go over that:https://convertblu-raydvd.forumcommunity.net/?t=57893768) or finding it through other means… But do everthing at your own risk and corresponding legalities in your country. download and install BD3D2MK3D (https://www.videohelp.com/software/BD3D2MK3D) – a GUI to convert movies from 3D Blu-rays to 3D MKV video files in Full Side By Side [converting to “Top & Bottom” / “Frame Sequential” possible as well] (only available for Windows so sorry to MacOS and Linux users; although using it in virtual machines or with Wine (for Linux) it maybe could work, but I haven’t tried that)Following are instructions on settings for BD3D2MK3D for a possibly best ratio between file size and image quality while maintaining compatibility with VR headsets like Quest 2:[this is the part that took hundreds of hours of benchmarking and testing][quick explanation beforehand: I’ll format menu structures with “>” and then after “->” the corresponding action you have to do in this menu] mount the ripped Blu-ray ISO (either by right-clicking and selecting to mount or open with a Blu-ray player program like e.g. PotPlayerMini64 (a good tool to check through ISO before encoding as well)) open BD3D2MK3D Settings > AVC/HEVC Encoder -> select “Encode in h265 HEVC with x265 (Experimental)” Settings > Full-SBS/T&B aspect ratio -> select “Use respectively 32:9 or 16:18 AR” Settings > Power Plans > Power Plan to use when encoding -> select your highest power plan(or select your highest power plan in Windows settings or Control Panel) and set display shutdown to Never in Windows setting or use “Awake” in PowerToys by Microsoft to achieve the same 1: Open Blu-ray 3D > Open blu-ray 3D -> select the Blu-ray ISO you have mounted earlier (usually “D:” if no other partitions or drives on your PC are called D: already) 2: Select streams -> select best quality of desired languages 2: Select streams -> tick off “Forced subtitles are authored in their own separate streams” 2: Select streams -> select both subtitles of each of desired languages (=> select forced captions while watching movie to get whole plot (e.g. for when Na’vi is spoken in Avatar (2009))) 2: Select streams -> tick off “Use the 5.1 core (…)” (or tick on if you want to make sure that it will be compatible with any device; 7.1 can cause issues when streaming via DLNA (which I’ll get into later) to older headsets like Oculus Go and Samsung Gear VR, but works totally fine with Quest 2; althogh Oculus Go and Samsung Gear VR can handle 7.1 surround sound when the files are copied to them directly) 3: Title & tags -> name movie “[Name] ([Year]) – 3D Full-SBS” (=> name and year for Plex (which I’ll get into later) to automatically find metadata for movie; “3D” to later be able to differenciate the 3D version from maybe a 2D version in your files; “Full-SBS” for Skybox VR (which I’ll get into later) to automatically use SBS settings) 5: Options and Go! -> tick off “Half – Side by Side” 5: Options and Go! > Mode: -> select “CRF” 5: Options and Go! > CRF/Quantizer (…) -> enter “20” [determines quality] 5: Options and Go! > Preset > slow [determines compression / file size] 5: Options and Go! > Tune -> select “none” 5: Options and Go! > Colour depth -> select “10 bits” [results in better color range than with “8 bits” if source ISO is in 10 bits; when source ISO in 8 bits, “10 bits” works as well so you can just leave this setting for future compressions when the source ISO is in 10 bits] create a folder optimally called something with “temp” in your file system (=> so files and folders can later be manually cleaned/deleted completely without accidentally deleting other data) 5: Options and Go! > Project (temp) folder -> point to said temp folder 5: Options and Go! > Output (MKV) folder -> point to folder in which you want to store your 3D Full-SBS movies leave everything else unchanged 5: Options and Go! -> tick on “mux to MKV file” and select “keep command promt opened” 5: Options and Go! -> click on “Do it!”[after that a new smaller window opens] tick on “Exit and encode after successful demux”[after several minutes a Command Prompt window will open] now wait while the files with encoding instructions get generated into the temp folder and get carried out in Command PromptThis can take several hours depending on your PC (especially CPU) so just let this run over night or adjust to a higher CRF (which decreases quality) or faster Preset beforehand (which increases file size) to cut down on encoding time. Playing with these two settings can determine an encoding time of a couple of minutes to several hours and even days but they also affect quality and files size.[for some reference: for one movie my ASUS ROG Flow X13 (GV301QE-K6052T) usually needs around 11 hours of encoding on average (depending on the film it can sometimes take way shorter and sometimes way longer) with said settings to achieve an file of around 11 GB with a relatively high quality that has no distinguishable differences to 20-40 GB files of some of the very few F-SBS movies you can find out there (again: if you know where to search for them) – so the time spent encoding (at best simply over night) will be really worth it for your drive space and the best possible viewing experience] TLDR: best settings for BD3D2MK3D: x265, 32:9, Full – Side by Side, CRF: 20, Preset: slow, Tune: none, Colour depth: 10 bits enjoy your 3D movie in desired apps and VR headsets! Update: After some questions came up: you can skip most of the process after your first conversion, because B3D2MK3D saves the settings and for future conversions you only have to: select a new ISO [Tab 1](optionally select the desired video and audio streams when the defaults aren’t to your liking [Tab 2]) give it a name [Tab 3] and hit “Do it!” [Tab 5] Also over the last couple of days there have been great suggestions in the comments of this post and its crossposts in other subreddits (which you can look up by going on my profile and looking at my recent posts) and our newr/3DMoviesInVRsubreddit on quicker options for how to get and watch Full-SBS 3D movies, so just look around. It would be hard to summarize all of them here comprehensively and there are still coming in new suggestions. —————————— This is my recommended setup for watching 3D movies in a (mobile) VR headset (in my case Quest 2): Programs: Plex on PC => because: 1) you probably have way more storage capacity on your PC (if not you can more easily expand it); 2) Plex gives you a more visually appealing and clear overview for your own library of movies and shows 3) lets you stream your media to Quest 2 (or other wireless VR headsets) – to do that create a DLNA server with Plex: Settings > Settings > DLNA -> tick on “Enable the DLNA server” Skybox VR on Quest 2 => because: 1) in my opinion best VR video player out there (for local media and streamed); 2) access said DLNA to stream your media from your PC to Quest 2 (moving the files to the “Movies” folder on your Quest 2 works as well, but will fill up your Quest 2 storage quite fast) for correct aspect ratio of movies enable the following settings in Skybox VR:Stereo Mode -> select “3D SBS” Advanced Settings -> select “Curved Display” Advanced Settings -> under “Aspect Ratio” select “16:9” Quest 2 Accessories: a comfy facial interface(I use a VR Cover facial interface) a good head strap(I use the KIWI design Elite strap with battery for comfort, battery life and last but not least as a counter weight for longer sessions so my neck doesn’t get too tired) a good pair of headphones(I use Koss Porta Pro with Yaxi Earpads + Wavelet sideloaded to Quest 2 for better EQ => in my opinion best possible audio solution on a relatively small budget which can easily compete in quality of sound and spacial audio with headphones costing several hundreds of Euros more) I have tried many different options both free and paid so I believe I have found the (currently) best (and somewhat budget friendly) combination of apps/tools/accessories for watching 3D movies in VR. When some are interested in even more details on how to set up a PC and Quest 2 for watching 3D movies like in the setup I havve mentioned I can try to answer here in the comments. —————————— And any other suggestions/improvements are welcome so let’s talk about them here as well and make this a big thread so more people, who are interested in watching 3D movies in VR, can find this and let’s make this niche interest into something that gets more attention and a bigger community so someday streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime will have the incentive to offer 3D movies again so all these workarounds won’t be necessary anymore.Maybe another way for gathering information about about the whole topic of “watching 3D Movies in VR” (that’s currently spread over multiple niche forums and websites) would be by building up together ther/3DMoviesInVRsubreddit I have just created.(And yeah, I know that I tend to dream big, but with upcoming headsets like Apple Vision Pro or Bigscreen Beyond putting more emphasis on watching video content maybe 3D will get more attention again as well.)