Capturing VR or XR experiences

Did you know that you can easily capture and share videos of the VR / XR headset experience with Varjo Base’s Record function? If you want to share your experiences with others, you can take screenshots or short videos of the virtual reality or mixed reality experience simply by pressing the ‘Record’ button available in Varjo Base. The video file is saved in the Videos > Varjo folder on your Windows computer. While these 2D depictions do great job of demonstrating the intended content, they can never convey the full visual experience of actually wearing the headset.

Capturing and portraying what a user actually sees through the lens when wearing a virtual or mixed reality headset (HMD) can be very difficult. It is hard to account for the effect that the specific HMDs have on the experience, missing for example the lens quality or field of view.

Nothing compares to the immersive experience of wearing the HMD in-person but taking a photograph inside the headset is perhaps the next best thing. Framing the image from the perspective of a user captures the combined experience of the visual content and the hardware’s delivery of said content.

However, capturing a true-to-life image ‘through the lens’ does take a certain amount of expertise. When done badly, imperfections such as chromatic aberration or soft focus generated from the use of the camera, can give an unwarranted poor representation of the actual visual fidelity of the device in question.

The ultra-high visual fidelity of Varjo HMDs is unparalleled in today’s VR/XR market, and care should be taken to do justice to the visceral experience of VR/XR with Varjo.

• Read Varjo’s guide to capturing through-the-lens material
• Watch through-the-lens footage of Varjo Aero on YouTube