Facebook and YouTube Both Push on Virtual Reality with 360 Video

While Google supports 360 video on YouTube from 3 months, Facebook have introduced this into its News Feed product few days ago. This is a great push towards virtual reality – specifically headsets.
If you are wondering what is 360 video, here is how Facebook explains it.
A special set of cameras is used to record all 360 degrees of a scene simultaneously. This means that when the video is playing on Facebook, you can choose what angle you want to see it from. On the web you can do this by dragging around the video with your cursor, and on mobile devices you do it by dragging with your finger — or even just by turning your device. You’ll be able to hold up your phone and the 360 video will follow you as you turn, looking around, to experience things from all over the world like never before.
Play YouTube video below to experience this feature. Click the direction button on the left top as you watch the video.

360 video has been major push towards virtual reality headsets like Samsung Gear VR, Google cardboard, Oculus Rift, Microsoft HoloLens, etc. User can see images and videos in three dimensions as they swivel around to change their view.  Ever though these products in the market are not widely adopted, you get to choose from many options if you have to buy one.
This article has covered all of them in detail for you.

For google, every feature gives an opportunity to sell ads. As soon as this new feature was introduced in YouTube Creator brands like coco-cola, nick started experimenting it. Coca-Cola’s 360 video celebrating the 100th anniversary of their iconic bottle design outperformed standard in-stream video ad view-through rates by 36%. Also YouTube realizes it is still early days and is ready to help creators in developing content for the platform.
On the other side, Facebook has tied up with number of publishers to push their 360 video medium ahead. Some of them include Star Wars, Discovery, GoPro, LeBron James & Uninterrupted, NBC’s Saturday Night Live, and VICE. Videos from these brands will help to show the range of possibilities with the new medium.
YouTube also said it would provide special camera rigs that support the format at its studios around the world, including at two locations opening in the next year in Toronto and Mumbai.
To create 360 degree video ads, you will need access to 360 degree cameras like Ricoh Theta,Kodak SP360,Giroptic 360cam, or IC Real Tech Allie. All of these cameras are already available or coming soon. Here is the best comparison of 360 video available in the market.

With this new technology a big event around the world could be pictured from all the directions and uploaded to internet. Internet users can watch the big event from desktop, mobiles, VR headsets by changing the direction or rotate the head around.
Author: Sachin G Kulkarni, Technical Lead
Author of this blog is web developer specialized in creating internet based business solutions. He has been in this field for nearly 5 years and have involved in building unique elegant business solution. He is a blogger, entrepreneur, developer and overall thinker. He holds a master degree in computer science which has helped him understand in-depth technology. He stay in startup hub ‐ Bangalore ‐ this has helped him to meet many wonderful entrepreneur, designers and like minded people.
Linkedin : http://in.linkedin.com/in/sachingk