VR sells at a higher price than flat, and it is unforgiving. Three mistakes cannot be fixed after the shoot — wrong format, wrong camera height, and never having watched your own footage in a headset. Everything else on this page is detail. Those three are the page.
1. The format we accept
VR180, side-by-side, left eye on the left. That is the only format that goes on sale here, and it is what every consumer VR camera produces by default.
Your file should be roughly twice as wide as it is tall — 5760×2880, 7680×3840 and similar. That is the two square eye images next to each other.
We do not accept 360°, over-under, or fisheye files. Not because they are bad, but because a file that plays in the wrong projection does not throw an error — it just looks wrong, and the buyer blames you.
Which camera? — our recommendation up to 1,000 €
Creators ask us this more than anything else, so here is a straight answer. The prices are what the makers’ own shops showed in September 2026 — they move, so treat them as a guide. The one rule behind every pick: two lenses side by side, recording VR180 at 5760×2880 or more, 30 fps, from a tripod. A camera that meets that plays here at full quality.
Our pick: SLAM XCAM 2026, base model (8 GB + 128 GB) — 999 US$ with customs and shipping included, under 1,000 € at today’s rate. Two Sony 1/1.5-inch sensors, 10-bit colour, 8K at 30 fps as finished VR180 3D (nothing to stitch on your computer), a 190° view, a 6.67-inch screen so you see what you shoot, a 5000 mAh battery — and, the part that matters for live, it streams 6K straight to our server over RTMP or SRT. Camera and encoder in one box: for a live show you do not even need OBS. It is the only camera we found under 1,000 € that fills our top 8K rung and goes live on its own.
If you want to spend less: CALF × VISINSE — about 800–900 US$ depending on the shop. Two Sony 1/2.3-inch sensors, 8K at 30 fps or 6K at 50 fps as finished VR180, RTMP streaming over its network port, pocket-sized at about 300 g. Two things to know before you buy: early units showed stair-step artefacts on vertical edges that firmware had to fix, and the picture does not reach the very top and bottom of the sphere (about 160° vertically). Straight ahead — where a fan looks — it is fine, but it is the smaller sensor and the less polished software of the two.
Cheapest way in: VR.cam 02 — about 200–400 US$. This is a USB camera for your computer, not a camera that records on its own: it plugs into OBS and delivers 3840×1920 side by side at 30 fps, as fisheye. That is 1920 pixels per eye — our lowest quality step. Good enough to try a live stream (set the VR180 switch to fisheye, 165°), too soft to sell recorded clips at VR prices: in a headset it looks like standard definition. Start here only if you plan to upgrade.
Above 1,000 €, for the record: ViewPT Realia (about 1,900 US$ — 8K at 30 fps, 6K at 50 fps, RTMP and USB), Canon EOS R7 or R50 V with the RF-S 3.9 mm dual-fisheye lens (about 2,500 US$ with the R7 body — only 4K and 144°, a poor fit for VR180), and the Canon EOS R5 C with the RF 5.2 mm dual-fisheye lens (about 6,000 € — the professional tier).
Whatever you buy: level it, put it at the viewer’s eye height (section 2), keep it still, and watch the first take in a headset before you shoot the rest (section 9).
Elsewhere you will read that a 360° camera or a phone “also does VR”. They do not produce VR180 3D — and a file in the wrong projection does not fail here, it just looks wrong in the headset.
2. Camera height and horizon — the mistake that cannot be fixed
In VR the camera is the viewer’s head. If the camera is at the wrong height, the viewer feels like a child or a giant for the whole clip, and no amount of editing repairs it.
- Standing scene: 1.60 m. Measure the lens, not the tripod.
- Sitting or kneeling scene: 1.20 m.
- The horizon must be dead level. A tilt you would not notice in a flat clip becomes nausea in a headset. Use the tripod’s bubble or the camera’s level.
- Do not move the camera during a take. Panning and handheld are fine flat and awful in VR. If you want a new angle, cut and reposition.
3. Distance
The sweet spot is 40 cm to 1.5 m from the lens.
- Closer than ~30 cm the two eyes cannot fuse the image and it hurts to look at.
- Beyond ~2 m the depth flattens out and you have thrown away the reason to shoot VR.
- Eye contact with the lens is the strongest thing you have in this format. It does not exist in flat video. Use it.
4. Light, sound, and shoot order
- Light from behind the camera, not behind the performer. VR cameras have small sensors and a backlit scene turns to noise.
- Nothing directly behind the camera that you do not want on screen: 180° is wider than it sounds, and lights, bags and phones end up in frame.
- Sound matters more than in flat video because the viewer feels present. A cheap mic near the scene beats the camera’s own.
- Shoot clean first, dirty second. You can always get dirtier; you cannot get clean again without stopping to wash the camera and the set. Plan the order before you start.
5. Uploading — the one step people get wrong
Tick “This is a VR clip” BEFORE you upload the file.
This is not a label. Your file is encoded for headsets the moment the upload finishes, minutes before you ever press Submit. If the box is not ticked at upload time, the file is encoded as a flat video — and there is nothing in the result that says so. It simply plays wrong in a headset.
If that happens, the fix is to upload the file again with the box ticked. Ticking it afterwards on an already-encoded file does not convert it.
In the bulk uploader the same rule applies: switch These files are VR on before you drop the files. Each queued row shows a VR chip, and you can click a row’s chip to change that one file while it is still waiting.
When VR is on, the VR category is added automatically and cannot be removed. That is deliberate: buyers filter by it, and a VR clip that is not in the category is a clip nobody with a headset will find.
6. The trailer is your VR teaser — and it is required
A VR clip cannot go to review without a trailer, and the trailer is automatically treated as the free VR teaser: it gets the same VR encoding and the same in-headset button.
This is the single biggest thing you control for conversion. A buyer who has watched fifteen seconds of your work in their own headset is a different buyer from one looking at a thumbnail. Make the teaser something you would want to see.
Keep it short — fifteen to thirty seconds — and shoot it at the same height and distance as the clip, so it is an honest sample.
7. What NOT to put on the picture
Never burn a logo, watermark, text or overlay onto a VR frame. A side-by-side frame is two eyes next to each other. Anything drawn once lands in one eye only, and the viewer’s brain fights it for as long as it is on screen. It is one of the few things that makes people take the headset off.
The same goes for editing: no zooms, no speed ramps, no transitions that move the whole picture. VR rewards holding a good angle.
8. Resolution, and what it costs in time
Shoot the highest resolution your camera offers. VR spreads the picture across your whole field of view, so pixels that look generous in a flat clip look coarse in a headset. 6K is good. 8K is better.
Be aware that VR takes far longer to process than flat video. A 20-minute 8K VR clip occupies a whole encoding machine for roughly an hour. Your clip is not stuck — it is a big job. Upload it well before you plan to publish it.
9. Watch your own clip in a headset before you publish
This is the third unfixable mistake, and the easiest to avoid. Everything above can look perfect on a monitor and be wrong in a headset: the height, the tilt, the distance, an unnoticed light behind the camera.
Once your clip is processed, open it in your headset the same way a buyer would — the free teaser is enough. Five minutes there will teach you more than this whole page.
You do not have to publish first to check it: in the VR hub your unpublished clips sit under their own Drafts tab, which only creators see. A draft or a clip still in review plays there in full, marked with the plaque “Draft — only you can see this”; nothing is for sale there and nobody else can open it.
10. How your VR clip appears to buyers
- An orange VR badge and a resolution badge (8K / 6K / 4K) on every card.
- A Format filter on the clips page so headset owners can find only VR.
- On the clip page: a VR180 / SBS / resolution chip row, the free flat preview, and Watch preview in VR.
- After purchase: Watch in VR in the buyer’s library, next to the normal flat player.
- On feeds, Discover and social posts your clip appears as ordinary flat video — we generate a single-eye version for that automatically, so nothing ever shows the doubled side-by-side image.
Your price, your commission and your payout are exactly the same as for a flat clip.
11. Your VR cabin — poster, greeting, light
Fans who open your creator page inside the VR Hub stand in a small cabin. Three things in that cabin are yours to set, in Store Manager → VR, at the bottom of the form:
- VR cabin poster — hangs on the cabin wall. Portrait 2:3, for example 1000 × 1500 px, JPG/PNG/WebP. Fans can pin it to the wall of their own cabin (up to three creators), so a good poster keeps you in their room.
- VR greeting (audio) — plays once per visit when a fan opens your page in VR. MP3 or M4A, up to 10 seconds / 1 MB. Keep it short; it is the first thing they hear. No file needed: Record in the browser records up to 10 seconds straight from your microphone, lets you listen back, and we turn it into an MP3 for you.
- VR cabin light — a lamp under the cabin ceiling glows in this colour and lights your room from above; the ceiling light takes the tint too. Pick one from the list.
Nothing here is required — without them your page in the hub simply uses the standard cabin.
12. Premieres — and hosting one with your voice
In the clip form there is a field Premiere (VR) (optional). Enter a date and time in the site’s time zone. Until then the clip can be pre-ordered; the full clip plays in VR only from that moment, with a countdown on the card and an automatic start for buyers who are waiting in the dome. Leave the field empty for no premiere.
Once a premiere is saved, a link appears under the field: 🎤 Host the premiere with your voice — open the premiere room. It opens the premiere room in a normal browser tab on your computer. Press Go live in the premiere room and allow the microphone. From then on, fans who open your clip in the hub see a 🎤 Premiere button in the dome bar; when they press it they hear you, and what they write in the chat shows up on your page — you answer in the same chat box. Only you can speak.
- Keep the tab open while you talk. Closing it, or pressing End the premiere room, closes the room for everyone; fans then see “The premiere room is closed”.
- Open the room a few minutes before the premiere, so fans who are already waiting in the dome hear you before the clip starts.
- You need a microphone the browser may use. There is no camera and no video from you in the room — your clip is the picture.
- The room holds up to 500 listeners.
13. Toy script (.funscript) — let a fan feel the clip
Fans can pair a Lovense toy with the hub (they do that at /toy/ on this site, with the Lovense Remote app). If your clip carries a toy script, their toy follows it while the full clip plays in the dome.
Upload it in the clip form under Toy script (.funscript): a .funscript file (JSON with an actions list of at/pos — the format funscript editors such as OpenFunscripter export), timed to the full clip, up to 1 MB. After saving, the form tells you what it read — for example “Toy script saved: 120 actions, 1.0 min.” — or why the file was not accepted. Tick remove and save to take it off again.
- Only the bought full clip drives a toy; trailers never do.
- The script follows the clip’s own time: when a fan pauses or jumps, the toy pauses or jumps with it.
- Position values 0–100 in the script become the toy’s strength.
- Fans without a paired toy see nothing of this — the clip plays as usual.
14. VR moments — letting fans share a teaser
A moment is a short piece of your clip — up to 15 seconds — that a fan who has bought the clip can take with them from the dome and share. Every moment is watermarked with your name and carries a link back to your clip, so a shared moment is a small advertisement for you.
- You decide. Under Store Manager → VR → VR moments you allow or forbid it. Turning it off hides all existing moments of your clips at once.
- Fans can only take moments from clips they own; the free trailer never yields a moment.
- You see the list of moments taken from your clips on the same page and can delete any of them.
