YouTube Is Adding VR Video Support To Streaming Videos

An anonymous reader writes: While YouTube's streaming platform currently supports 3D videos OR 360 degree videos, the combination of the two is essential for properly immersive virtual reality video. Fortunately, the company has announced that they'll soon enable support for 3D + 360 degree videos, bringing more immersive VR video capability to the platform. Currently, 360 degree YouTube videos can be viewed through desktop web browsers and on the YouTube Android and iOS apps, with the Android app being the only one of the bunch currently providing a side-by-side view for VR viewers like Google's Cardboard.

Comments

Fuckin' A! This sounds sweet! Firefox, though?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuckin' A! This sounds sweet!

But as a Firefox user, will I be able to take advantage of this? Or must I switch to Chrome for this to work?

I ask this, because I know that Firefox sometimes has problems doing things that require performance. It is slower than all of the other browsers on my system, and I know that high end VR and 3D graphics are really intensive.

I don't want to switch to Chrome though. I don't want to use a browser made by an advertising company and a browser with a dumbed down unusable UI. At least Firefox isn't made by a company that's so devoted to advertising and collecting my personal data. But if Firefox can't handle this technology then I know I will have to switch to Chrome, at least sometimes.

VR is for cats.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are all cats. Cats say meow. Meow says the cat. MEOW!!!

Re:VR is for cats.

[Anonymous Coward]

Catgirls in VR? Where do I sign up?

Please tell me "cardboard" is a joke.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please. It looks like one of those Republican-style investor scams.

360 + stereoscopic?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell do you film that?

Re: 360 + stereoscopic?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the most part, either very badly, or with pure CGI.

3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[Anonymous Coward]

You need more than just 360 degree video and stereoscopy to create VR that works. As someone who owns an Oculus Rift DK2 and has used a number of good and not so good demos, head tracking is required to prevent the nauseating horrible feeling. They'd have to digitize the whole environment or come up with some sort of dynamic trick to make it actually usable in VR.

Re:3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

You do get head tracking with it.

Re:3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[Anonymous Coward]

Rotational tracking is not enough. And even basic rotation can't be done with these data sets since your eyes move when you turn your head. You really have to have footage from all the locations your eyes might be at, and if supporting 360 degrees, thats far more than 2. This is impractical, which is why 3d films for VR haven't really been working out very well. The only practical way to do with is with a proper 3d models scene rendered for where your eyes are.

Re:3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

If you're saying you cannot do spherical video in stereo... you're wrong.

Re:3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[Anonymous Coward]

In order for the experience to not be vomit-inducing, you actually need about a cubic foot of space (or more) to move around in, in any direction (x+y+z+pitch+yaw+roll). Pivoting around a single point isn't good enough - this is what happens in VR demos when head tracking is missing, and it's very disorienting. If they do have some way to capture this range of perspectives and recreate the space to move around in effectively, then great, but that's more than just 360 degree video and stereoscopic 3D.

Re:3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're saying you cannot do spherical video in stereo... you're wrong.

A view from where each eye is, and a view in all directions are simple hard to combine, since your eyes move when you look in different directions...

So you have 2 video feeds, one from where your left eye is, and one from where your right eye is. Turn your head to the right 90 degrees. You now have 2 videos feeds, one from where your left ear is, and one from where your right ear is. The problem is you are still doing the looking with your eyes, so what do you show them? Neither video feed is correct for either eye.

There are interpolation tricks you can do, but they amount to basically constructing a 3d scene. At this point its not video playback, its rendering a full 3d scene. That's very different.

Re: 3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[Karljohan]

Actually, there are many ways to do 360 video in stereo, however the eye separation (direction/slant) is always determined when the video is generated. This means that when you move/tilt your head, the eye separation will be wrong.

Dome production solve this in different ways but it's never real VR. It's typically based on the principle that the dome audience look mostly forwards.

Re:3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't "need" 2 video feeds, it would be nice but it isn't necessary.
Imagine the following scenario: Instead of having a VR helmet you display a panoramic video on all walls of a room.
Will this cause nausea? No, not if done right. VR developer Jesse Schell wrote down a few simple rules in a blog about "I Expect You To Die"

Now instead of projecting the video on the walls you place the panoramic video on a skybox and place around the consumers head.
The consumer is free to move his or her head freely within the skybox. This means that you can tilt your head, move it back and forth. There will be a slight difference between right and left eye, and the difference you get will tell your brain that the video is mapped on a flat surface not that far away from you.
It will still be possible to get immersion from the video even with the lack to parallax effect. You still have perspective.

If you have an oculus and want proof of concept you can just follow this guide to make a panoramic view of your choice.
There is a similar guide for still photos if you find that more convenient.

Re:3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not 3d, thats just 360 video.

Re:3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Turn your head to the right 90 degrees. You now have 2 videos feeds, one from where your left ear is, and one from where your right ear is.

Again, this is untrue, and I don't know where you're getting this information from. You can generate left-eye/right-eye spherical views that are stereo in *any* direction. This has been done both in CG and with live-video, and does not require interpolation... just more cameras. This is not interpolation, either.

There are two limitations. The first is that between the two cameras there are areas that one camera can see and the other cannot, this creates a region of occlusion. This creates a bubble around the camera, virtual or real, that won't be viewed properly. The minimum size of that bubble is determined by the separation of the cameras, anything passing into it will get cut off or distorted.

The second is that the stereo effect doesn't work past the poles because now you're looking at video intended for viewing from the opposite orientation. There is no known solution for this.

This is not theory, these sorts of videos are already out in the wild.

Re:3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Click that link, it specifically mentions stereo spherical video.

Re: 3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

No, it doesn't mean that. Eye separation does not change when you look around in a spherical video. I don't know where this myth that stereo spherical video is only stereo looking straight ahead, but it's not even close to true.

Re:3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[kesuki]

back in the day didn't they just use fisheye lenses to get the desired effect? http://realvision.ae/blog/2014/08/part-2-graduated-stereo-falloff-in-360-the-language-of-visual-storytelling-in-vr/

Re:3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Honestly I'm unaware of stereo panoramic shots done back in the day... which I'm assuming is sometime in the 90's when products for this purpose started appearing on the market. I didn't see an actual stereo viewer until this year. (Although the place I worked at did experimental stuff.)

I know that video shot these days would involve multiple pairs of cameras, stitched together with stereo in mind. The app that does the stitching, however, needs to be aware that the footage is stereo, otherwise it'll try to 'correct' the seams, not realizing that sometimes it shouldn't.

Re: 3D stereoscopy + 360 != VR

[Anonymous Coward]

Even oculus doesnt have eye tracking, and isnt expected to for maby years. This is incremental

Realtors

[Anonymous Coward]

Realtors will shit their pants for this. Most real estate pics/vids end up hosted elsewhere as they tend to be 360 degree views.

Yay, But...

[Greyfox]

I'm super-psyched about all of this, but I suspect the camera I'm going to have to bolt onto my helmet to film 3D 360 degree VR videos while flying the wingsuit is going to be nasty.