Controls in the Headset: the Floating Panel, Controllers and Hands

A banner stays locked to your head rather than to the scene, so it is always readable no matter which way you turn: the current filename, the projection FastMediaSorter detected - 360°, 180°, cylinder or flat - and the stereo layout it is using. If something about the file goes wrong, the same banner turns red instead of silently vanishing, so you always know at a glance whether what you are looking at is actually working.

The main controls live on a world-locked panel that hangs in front of you rather than moving with your head: point the controller ray at a button to highlight it, and pull the trigger to click it, the same ray-and-trigger motion the immersive browser uses. Play/Pause, Previous, Next, and sliders for Volume and depth all sit here, and the panel's own PREV/NEXT buttons walk the whole resource list you arrived from, not just the one file.

The panel does not show every control for every file. An audio-track picker appears only when a file actually has more than one track to choose from; a subtitle picker appears only when subtitles exist; the stereo depth slider appears only for stereo content. Whatever controls do not apply simply are not there, and the remaining ones spread out to use the width that frees up, so the panel never looks half-empty or crowded depending on what you happen to be watching.

The panel carries a position bar with the elapsed and total time shown beside it - point the controller ray at it and drag to seek anywhere in the film, the same way you would drag a seek bar with a finger on a phone.

The left controller's menu button opens Session settings - a second panel for everything you would otherwise have to leave the film to change: Layout (Mono, Side by side, Over-under), Projection (Mono, 180°, 360°, Cylinder - the same modes covered in the four screen shapes), Panel distance, Panel size, Subtitles (On/Off) and Resume position. Every change here applies to this session only, and playback never stops while you make it - close the panel with the menu button again and you are exactly where you left off.

The HUD strip carries HIDE and EXIT buttons at opposite ends, so a slip of the ray never triggers the wrong one. HIDE removes the whole strip from view, and a single trigger pull - pointed at nothing in particular - summons it straight back, no need to aim at where it used to be.

Left alone, the strip does the same thing on its own: after 15 seconds with no ray hovering over it, it fades away so it does not sit between you and the film; any hover or click resets that countdown, and the same trigger-pull summon brings it back exactly as if you had pressed HIDE yourself.

Push the thumbstick and the film seeks ten seconds a step - no need to aim at the seek bar for a quick nudge forward or back. Hold the grip button while you push the same stick and it steps between files instead, so you can flip through a folder with the same hand motion you already use to seek, without ever reaching for the panel's PREV/NEXT buttons.

Every click on the panel gives the controller a short vibration, and hovering the ray over a button gives it a lighter one - a bit of feedback that does not depend on looking at exactly the right pixel. Set the controllers aside and FastMediaSorter still works: hand tracking recognizes a pinch as a click, aiming the ray with your hand the same way you would with a controller, and it processes hand gestures for leaving the session too, so nothing here strictly requires holding anything.

Show FPS overlay, in the same VR settings block covered in setting up your headset and OpenXR, draws a live, smoothed frame-rate counter over the immersive view - a diagnostic for the curious rather than something you need in everyday use, and it is off by default so it never gets in the way of the film.