You will soon share 360 photos and videos while in VR.
During day one of the F8 developer’s conference yesterday, Facebook again showed us just how important social is to the company when it comes to future platforms. Whether mixing the physical and digital world with their new augmented reality camera platform or creating the best social VR experience we’ve seen yet with Spaces, one thing is for sure, Facebook wants to make sharing with friends as easy as possible.
That’s why today, Facebook has announced a new plugin for VR that will hopefully make it simple for people to capture their VR experiences through a 360 photo or video.
When you’re the person in VR, the experience is amazing — something you can’t wait to tell your friends about. But there’s always been a challenge — no matter how hard you try to describe the experience, it’s never the same as physically trying it yourself.
Enter the new 360 Capture SDK. The Facebook plugin for VR will let you capture your experience with 360 photos and videos that can then be uploaded to News Feed or played in a VR headset. Not only could this be a huge boom for VR gaming, much like we’ve seen with the success of Twitch, but will add an entirely new way of creating content for social experiences and marketing initiatives.
You can dive into more of the developer details on Facebook’s blog, which covers some interesting insight into the decision to use cube mapping and the advantages that come with accessibility. Developers wanting to integrate 360 Capture SDK into their game title or virtual reality app can find a sample SDK here.
What we can look forward to though is how brands and developers will utilize 360 Capture into their VR experiences in the future. You can immediately see how this will likely be integrated into Facebook’s existing social VR Spaces app, letting you take 360 photos or videos instead of a 2D selfie.
From the branded content side, this may just be what marketers have been looking for to allow VR users to capture immersive content that can then be shared on social of their experience. Or imagine a future world when VR e-sports gameplay are all captured in 360 videos that anyone can relieve the moment in headset.
Either way, we can’t wait to see what developers create. You can expect use to be the first ones in line clicking share from inside VR.
