Mark Zuckerberg has always been on about how Facebook is trying to bring forth more vivid content formats, from text to photos to videos to VR. Being true to his words, Zuck’s social networking website today announced that News Feed will now support 360-degree video.
This means that you will now be able to share 360-degree videos of your fun vacation with all your friends online. The service is now available for Android and web users and is expected to come along for iOS in a few months.
Initial publishers include Star Wars, Discovery, GoPro, LeBron James & Uninterrupted, NBC’s Saturday Night Live, and VICE who will start posting 360 videos.
The new service will allow you to pan videos by moving your phone around by using your device’s gyroscope. It will pick up the swiveling motions and convert them into moving your perspective. So, that means that you will be able to easily get a good view from different angles of any beautiful scenery.
While the service is great, the cost for actually shooting 360-degree videos currently is not quite low. You will need hardware like the Bubblecam which will cost you around $800. In future, though, we could see advancements in the camera sensors of mobile phones and other devices. This could lead to reduced costs and thus we might just get the VR experience that Facebook intends to make mainstream.
