Lenovo Classroom VR

trekker34

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Greetings, friends.

I work at a middle school and we are thinking about purchasing a class set of the Lenovo Classroom VR.


I spoke with one of the reps at Lenovo about using 3rd party apps that normally could be accessed through the Google Play Store. He told me that their new headset cannot access the Play Store and that,

"You may load APK files to our headset and install them. However only files that are built with the Pico SDK will work on our headset."

When asked about how I would determine whether an app is compatible (built with Pico SDK), he said,

"There is not a single place to find content for the headset. For instance, MEL Science is a company that has content for the Pico headset, but I don’t know if they have that posted. The Pico store has some educational applications but the store itself is not directly supported by our headset (although the apps would likely work). Lenovo’s Educational VR focus is more on the ThinkReality side and our content partners, and what people create themselves including 360 videos and WebXR. There is a ton that you can do, but we don’t have a store for accessing other vendors."

Unlike their first generation headsets, which can access the Play Store and Google applications, this version seems to be geared more towards either creating your own VR experiences, as he mentioned with the 360 videos, or using the software that is already built in. The two big things I am disappointed with is that the Play Store cannot be accessed, which means it seems like installing 3rd party apps is much more difficult and the fact that Google Expeditions, I'm told, is not compatible with the headsets. Expeditions is an amazing app, especially for schools, and unless there's a way to somehow get it work with the headsets, it'd be a real shame if we were unable to take advantage of it. There is so much wonderful content available. I did read that the Expeditions app itself is no longer being supported, I think sometime this summer, but the content is simply being moved to the Google Arts and Culture app, unless I'm mistaken? But he told me that no Google apps are supported by the headset. Could there be a workaround for this? According to the Lenovo website, the headsets do run on Android, though a specific version is not listed. Expeditions requires Android 4.4.

I suppose what I need to find out is how can I discover what apps are compatible* and if there is a workaround to getting Google apps, like Expeditions, to work.

*Is there a comprehensive list or someway to easily determine when looking at an app and it's info. How exactly would I discover if an app has been built with the Pico SDK?

Many thanks! I sure would appreciate any help. This isn't shaping up to be as straightforward as I would like.
 
As a teacher I’d love for this kind of thing to become commonplace.
Also as a teacher, it’s got disaster written all over it.
 
Pico SDK is the "codes" that a program must include, so the devices can control them. This goes also for all devices.
There is no "checker" if an application is available for these devices. The only thing you can do is ask the editor of the app. Most likely is that it might be coded with Pico SDK but not tested in all relevant devices.
Another thing is that the Pico devices (I assume so does Lenovo) are compatible with Viveport, so any 3DoF app in viveport is most likely to be compatible with these devices.
 

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