The video service offers a foundation that Google’s virtual reality division can build off of.
There is a thick fog drifting through the woods, obscuring everything more than few feet in front of my face. I can see a crooked sapling, and then behind me I hear the crunching of dry leaves. Turning, I spot several figures lurching slowly forward. As they come closer, details emerge: a stain of dark blood on one’s clothing, a piece of missing flesh on the arm of another. I can hear the ravenous murmuring grow louder, as the zombies close in from all sides.
This wild experience was delivered to me as a 360-degree film, posted on YouTube recently by AMC as part of its promotion for The Walking Dead. It felt especially terrifying to me because I was streaming on YouTube’s new VR app, which launches to the public today. I watched it on a Daydream View virtual reality headset powered by a Pixel smartphone. From the hardware to software, everything about this experience was crafted by Google, and it was terrific. I felt “present” in a horror film, a character sharing the same world with flesh-eating ghouls, not just watching it unfold as a spectator with a screen.
I got to spend a week reviewing YouTube’s VR and I found a lot to love. It’s a big step up from the VR experience Google has been able to deliver so far with its Cardboard headsets. The hardware means immersive films look better and head tracking is more accurate. More importantly, the software interface for casual browsing is terrific. Hopping from one video to another no longer feels like a chore, and you can keep an eye on what’s playing in the background while cueing up your next bite of entertainment.
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Take Merideth Foster, a YouTuber best known for videos on fashion and beauty. A 360-degree shot of her applying foundation and blush is probably a waste of everyone’s time. So YouTube partnered her with Surreal to craft a virtual tour of her apartment instead. Fousey Tube, a channel built around pranks and challenges, used skydiving to justify a 360-degree video.
Some creators kept their tried-and-true formula while adding a few bells and whistles for VR. Tastemade, a cooking channel, simply stuck a 360 camera into the kitchen, so viewers can feel like they are standing right alongside the hosts. They also experimented with animated overlays that pop up during the action. Instead of a two-dimensional video that cuts from a shot of the cook to a close-up of the food prep, the VR version drops a visual of eggs being whisked right in front of the chef. It’s funny and wonderful and weird and doesn’t always work well. It’s mixed-reality editing, a new approach for a new medium.
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Source: The Verge