Testing Immersive Storytelling in 360 Degrees

Earlier in the year I had some fun with a little 360 camera on a visit to San Antonio for work - experimenting with a few tests around the office and to taking it for a spin on a site visit (colloquially - the camera hardware does not physically rotate to take a photo). I have previously written about my excitement for 360 and virtual reality photography and video, which I have enthusiastically used to document snippets of earlier trips.

Above is a quick 360 time lapse video, and below are 360 degree photographs. Both can be panned around using your mouse; most mobile devices will allow you to pan around the image by moving your phone.

These lived on my phone for a few months. Part of this was forgetfulness, but another was simply logistical - I did not know how to get them in a format that was easily sharable. Google Cardboard panoramas are great at capturing panos and snippets of sound, but do not translate easily once out of the app and off of your phone. There are really only a handful of sites that support virtual reality photo and video formats. For video, these include Vimeo and YouTube, and for photos these include Flickr and Facebook. There are still compression issues, and each hosting site has its own little quirks to work around in order for the photos be recognized as being virtual reality capable. Updated scripts recognize virtual reality metadata, but some older files may need to be tagged appropriately (at least on Flickr).

The camera I was able to play around with, the Samsung Gear 360, produced some very soft images that are not the greatest quality; there are also issues with the spherical stitching of the images. However, I did like the format and ease of use so much that I ordered what should hopefully be a serious upgrade - the Insta360 One X. It arrives in a few days, and I am pretty pumped to play around with it.