Supermedium: The VR Comic Book Reader

Hiya all

I bought Supermedium yesterday after testing the demo (it looks incredible, guys, and learning that it supports pdf files was an unexpected bonus). So far, so good... except that I don't seem to be able to transfer files from the desktop app to the Quest 2. I have access to a Quest 1 too, and there it just works, so... would it need an update or something of the sort?

Thanks in advance :)

SupermediumDeveloper4 years ago

Sorry for the inconvenience. I cannot reproduce. I can transfer files to both Quest 1 and 2 from same computer. Have you tried transferring with the cable?

Hi, yes, I have, all the time I've been trying has been with the USB cable connected to the computer :(. I also made sure that the firewall was open for the app and everything else. I really don't know what else could I do, or if I'm missing something very obvious.

Is there any way to just have the files I want to transfer processed so that I could simply put them on the Quest 2 myself using the windows explorer? I mean, not really ideal, but if it works... ^^

So... I installed the desktop app on a different computer and now it works. I don't know anything anymore ^^

Shewbrookj4 years ago

Hi, I am having the exact same problem wrt Quest 2 not syncing properly with the desktop App. it is so frustrating because the comics in VR look amazing. I'd like another way of putting the comics into the quest storage space because at the moment, i can't read the comics i was hoping to. I've tried getting this to work for hours with no luck.

Same issue here. I just got my Quest 2 and this sounded like a great idea. The demo lets me view the included comics fine, but I can't get my own transferred to my device. I've tried a lot of different things. Nothing shows up over wifi while I have the desktop app running. If I tag items for USB transfer, it never sees the Quest 2 as connected. I've tried with developer mode on and off. I would consider a purchase if this gets fixed.

Celeroo4 years ago

Hey guys from the last two posts here. any updates? i know that i had a bit of trouble getting them on there eventually and it seemed to be a combination of malwarebytes, acronis or windows firewall preventing the information flow. i installed it on a laptop with none of these, turned off the FW (during this exercise) and it worked just fine. Just a thought. IT is COMPLETELY worth it once you get it working!

The machine I tried this on had no firewall and no antivirus. I've moved on to a video player that also will let me view cbr/cbz as a slideshow. I would try this app again if there was a more reliable way to get the files loaded, though.

Tried installing the server on a VM on my network - still no luck.

Celeroo4 years ago

Did you try it with your usb cable connected?

No, that VM is headless, but I tried several times with the USB cable on my desktop with no results. At this point I've moved on to another app.

MrGroovyLion4 years ago

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.

Celeroo4 years ago

are you running the latest for both windows client and apk?

Akimya4 years ago (2 edits)

Same issue here,

USB transfert on Quest 2 not working. Wifi transfert is working fine.

I've tried :

Run Supermedium as an admin > same issue

3 differents computers > same issue

Uninstalled/reinstalled everything (lastest version with deleting the app/data folder in between) > same issue

With or Without sidequest > same issue

update to the last version of the oclulus quest 2 (V23)> same issue

If you are not able to reproduce this bug, try installing your software on another computer?

Or maybe it's something related to our localisation / OS language ? I'm from France and I can tell that the app is not handeling well accented caracters like é è...

Anyway it would be nice to hear some news about this issue. Thanks

Hi, dev here,

Appologies the inconvenience and the delayed response. We had a team member living and had to juggle priorities.

It looks like something specific to Quest 2 is not letting the companion app transfer the files adequately on a cable connection via adb. Issues don’t reproduce in Quest 1 and not sure what’s the difference between the two systems at the moment.

To compensate I’m happy to offer a refund. Send me the email you used to buy the app on itch.io to diego@supermedium.com and I’ll handle it.

I appologize again for all the inconvenience,

Diego.

evans.light3 years ago

Same issue. Quest 2, Windows 10. Worked fine on Quest 1, but nothing will transfer to Quest 2.

Hi, dev here,

Appologies the inconvenience and the delayed response. We had a team member living and had to juggle priorities.

To compensate I’m happy to offer a refund. Send me the email you used to buy the app on itch.io to diego@supermedium.com and I’ll handle it.

I appologize again for all the inconvenience,

Diego.

evans.light3 years ago

Thank you. Will do.

Kitkat003 years ago(+1)

can someone who got this to work atleast tell us how the structure works by going to sidequest folders and see where the comics are moved to ?

big chance it’s just in the Android/obb folder ?

I already tried that (for Quest 2) and it does not work. When i found the foIders using sidequest, i thought i had finally found an alternative solution - only for hopes to be dashed. have still not been able to transfer comics from my PC to the Quest 2 despite following the advice above in deleting folders from the C drive. It has been an exercise in frustration. The issue does not happen on the developers PC and as result, thinks that the app works fine on the Quest 2.

MrGroovyLion3 years ago

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.

Kitkat003 years ago (1 edit)

thank you allot for your effort! It seems indeed as a hassle. Probably there is a db file somewhere who keeps track of the folder paths.

It’s amazing that someone has such a great app but just lets it fail. It’s like Apple dumps the iPhone because iTunes had bugs lol.

I hope that if it turns out to be abandonware (what I seriously don’t hope) that the developer opensource the project.

I will try immersionvr it seems it’s also a comic viewer. It’s amazing that supermedium showed me that it can be amazing but I need to search for a different app to actually get my comics to work :\

Hi, dev here,

Appologies the inconvenience and the delayed response. We had a team member living and had to juggle priorities.

To compensate I’m happy to offer a refund. Send me the email you used to buy the app on itch.io to diego@supermedium.com and I’ll handle it.

I appologize again for all the inconvenience,

Diego.

ScytaleZero3 years ago

The developer doesn't seem too interested in this, so I'll just throw out that I'm using a video player called Pigasus to read comics on my Quest 2. It allows you to directly open CBR/CBZ files from the device or SMB file shares and essentially view them as a slide show. It's not as nice of a UI as Supermedium, but it actually works with no special setup. Oh yeah and it plays videos too :-)

thanks!

I was reverse engineering the windows application to see if I can get it to work for everyone. It seems it’s a electron app.

The biggest issue is it does an ADB call that seems to return no connection on the oculus quest 2 but it works on quest 1.

Will let you know if I can find anything to make it work... would be so much easier if the developer just opensourced this if it was too hard for him. Talking about the companion app not the VR app it self.

Hi, dev here,

Appologies the inconvenience and the delayed response. We had a team member living and had to juggle priorities.

To compensate I’m happy to offer a refund. Send me the email you used to buy the app on itch.io to diego@supermedium.com and I’ll handle it.

I appologize again for all the inconvenience,

Diego.

Kitkat003 years ago(+1)

Hi Diego,

I didn’t buy it yet. I was only trying the demo app. In fact I just bought it just to show my support. I hope you guys can fix it... shouldn’t be too hard...

btw it only detects the quest 1 when I open sidequest along side it. I guess because adb creates a server connection.

Lavile3 years ago

Bought the app just now, using quest 2 as well. I found the best way to download is that do not mark the comics in pc app. Just open the comics in the headset while plug in and wait for half a minute then you can read it offline.

wait can you explain it step by step ?

Does it recognize your device ?

Lavile3 years ago

Select allow usb while plugging your quest 2 to your pc, you can toggle the popup in developer setting. Make sure you can see your quest 2 in windows file explorer. Open the companion app and scan comics folder, you do not need to mark them for downloading. Just open the app in headset then you can see the comics.

Man I tried everything. The software is just too buggy even in the VR app sometimes the featured are not opening or the tabs are not switching.

I tried the following for Quest 2:

- Disabled all firewalls

- Connected through ethernet and wifi (same one as Quest)

- Try to move it manually but Quest not showing up as a device

It still shows that I should download the app to see my comics.

At this point I just gave up I and will ask for a refund. I had some hope that the developer would reach out to quickly fix these issues but he has other priorities. Atleast should have added some more error prone way to get the comics to the headset.

I will just try another app maybe will look at this again in the future

Emulover25553 years ago (1 edit)

This seems to work with smaller files. I tried using this method on books and 100pg mangas and it will stop loading pages after 6 pages. (20 if I'm lucky) leaving it on for any period of time does nothing. I wish the developer would just let us use whatever file conversion he's using to transfer the pages to our devices manually.

Lavile3 years ago

You can try turning off WiFi after the save icon appears at the book cover. That solves the loading issue for me.

When you say turning off wifi - do you mean on your PC or the Quest 2?

Celeroo3 years ago

man im so sad this is turning into such a bad experience for people. i LOVE this app and though it is sometimes painful, when i plug in directly to the PC where my files are stored it works like a charm. so sorry for all of you since when it works it is the best on the market!

Kitkat003 years ago(+1)

Well yeah it’s the owners choice to work on it or not. But I have started development on a VR Comic reader myself.

So maybe something good will come out of it in the end ;)

Celeroo3 years ago(+1)

👍🏼

Kitkat003 years ago (1 edit)

I think it’s important for people to know before buying that for people it doesn’t work on Quest 2 and sometimes Quest 1 has bugs to transfer comics to.

So buyers beware :) dev isn’t also working on it so it will not be solved in a short time notice

might be worth leaving that Quest 2 note on the sidequest site as well.

RocketRon_NL3 years ago

Hi, i've tried this method today with the demo but the comics won't transfer. I don't see any progression status. My headset is connected and still the message at the right bottom says "connect you heatset to transfer files via usb".. when hover over it says its not connected but it is :(

What do i do wrong?

RocketRon_NL3 years ago

Read the comments i know enough. The dev's are sleeping on an island far far away. Bye, i will remove everything.