National Geographic will be the first to test the new feature.
Publishers will soon be able to take their live streams to an entirely new level — broadcasting live in 360-degrees.
Facebook unveiled the latest expansion to live broadcasting Monday, dubbed Live 360, that marries their existing features of livestreaming and pre-recorded 360-degree videos.
The social network is partnering up with NatGeo for the first live 360-degree video to promote the cable network’s “Mars” colonization series. Tomorrow, December 13th at 12pm ET, NatGeo will broadcast live from its Mars Desert Research Station facility in Utah. The facility has been home to eight scientists for the past 80 days, living in artificial habitats that replicate life on the Red Planet.
NatGeo is expected to give us a look behind the scenes of the scientists’ living quarters, suiting up for a “spacewalk,” and video from a rover taking a spin across the Martian landscape. The first Live 360 broadcast is also expected to include Q&A with experts, writers and thinkers, who will take questions from Facebook users around the world.
No word yet on what kind of video resolution we can expect from Live 360 broadcasting, where 4K video has become quite a necessity to ensure a crisp 360-degree viewing experience. YouTube just launched 4K 360-degree live streaming earlier this month.
What we can expect is that the Live 360 feature won’t be available for all publishers to start, slowly rolling it out to select pages in the coming months before opening access to both Pages and user Profiles by the end of next year.
Image Credit: Facebook