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MrGroovyLion

3
Posts
A member registered Nov 09, 2020

Recent community posts

I took a look using SideQuest, and SuperMedium stores files on Quest 2 in:

sdcard / Android / data/ com.Supermedium.Supermedium / files /comics

However, it does not, unfortunately, simply store .cbz and .cbr files. Instead the Windows desktop app (presumably) explodes them, changes file names, and adds a metadata file.

Specifically, it exploded my .cbr file into a directory with an apparently random number for a name.

  • the image files were put into an 'images' folder.
  • the images files were renamed, starting with "000", with no extension, and increasing numerically.
  • a 'colors.json' file was put into a 'metadata' folder

It also put a 200 x 400 thumbnail of the cover into a 'thumbs' folder at the same level as the comic folder. The thumbnail had the same numeric name as the comic folder, with .jpg extension.

I tried a simple test. I exploded a .cbr file and put the jpg's into an images folder. I did not rename the images, not did I bother with metadata/colors.json. I created a 200x400 thumbnail. I put it onto my quest in the folder along with the other comics, fired up SuperMedium and ... nothing. It did not get picked up. Perhaps there's a database it's also using to keep track of what's on the headset ... who knows.

So it looks like attempting to reverse engineer all this is a hassle. Our best bet would be to hope the developer sees his way clear to supporting .cbz and .cbr files stored locally on the Quest. Then we wouldn't need the buggy and insecure Windows program. That would be great, because the comics reader itself is really, really nice. Too bad it's shackled to a dumpster fire.

You can also take a look at my post on the Proprietary library manager? No thanks! thread, which the developer never responded to.

I just installed the demo and I enjoy the functionality of the app, but agree that the file manager approach is a bad idea, at least as it is currently implemented.

For starters, when I fired up the Windows desktop app for the first time it scanned the complete contents of "My Documents", finding not just my .cbz and .cbr files, but also apparently every .pdf file I have! This is a terrible way to start off with a new user ... the scan took about half an hour, and found a total of 8044 documents, the majority of which are random .pdf files. Do I want to view my old scanned tax returns in a comic viewer? NO! Plus, I don't feel at all comfortable with your making everything in My Documents available, including sensitive pdf files. This is a security nightmare.

Suggestion: You have an "Add Folders to Scan" button. Why not just let me use it? I know where my comics files are; I really don't want to wait for half an hour while you scan through all my files.

As I mentioned in another post, I also chose 3 comics to be downloaded via USB, but that didn't work at all.

Another problem is that I have my comics separated into a handful of folders, but you don't respect that ... they are all dumped into a flat list, making it difficult to find what I want to read, either in the Quest 2 or in the desktop app.

Above, you say "the Quest could not handle unzipping big files, we’d have to wait minutes and then it’d often run out of memory. " This is not true at all, at least not on the Quest 2. How do I know this? Because I used Sidequest to load the Perfect Viewer apk (Perfect Viewer is an Android comic reader), and then used Sidequest to copy over some .cbr and .cbz files.

On my Quest 2 I opened Perfect Viewer, pointed it to the Comics directory where I'd copied the files, and the comics loaded instantly. Each file was approximately 25MB. In fact, even though it was designed for Android phones and tablets, it works pretty well on the Quest 2, although the controls are a bit out of whack, and I don't know if it's possible to adjust the size of the screen that the Quest 2 uses to display Android apps (I want it bigger!). But it does support folders so it's easy to keep things organized.

On the plus side, I love the way Supermedium displays the comics for reading! I will probably go ahead and buy it because despite the overly complicated hassle of loading the comics, the reading experience is great, and  plus I'd like to support you.

So my final advice would be: rethink the whole file library idea ... if an Android app that isn't even designed for VR (Perfect Viewer) can allow you to read local files, files from Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc., and display them in folders in a really nice virtual bookshelf - and all without a separate library manager - I really don't think there's a need for you to put resources into reinventing the wheel here ... 

And think of how many people are turned off once they see you also need to install a separate Windows app!

Anyway, thanks for the app ... and will be looking forward to improvements!

Same problem here ... I selected 3 comics to be downloaded to my Quest 2, then connected it via USB and ... nothing. The Supermedium Windows app still says "Connect your headset to transfer 3 files via USB". In the meantime I used Sidequest to load the Supermedium apk, ran the program, and could browse through all the comics on my PC, but the Supermedium desktop app is still telling me to connect the headset so it can transfer the files.