Google has supported virtual reality via its YouTube video streaming service. When it introduced 360-degree and 3D videos back in 2015, it soon offered 360-degree live-streaming including spatial audio in 2016, alongside a dedicated YouTube VR app.
In a recent announcement, the Mountain View search company said that its YouTube video sharing site and Daydream would produce 360-degree and VR, which is going to be even better. According to Digital Trends, both companies will bridge the gap between what we visually perceive and what today's interconnectivity and capabilities of existing devices.
Accordingly, way to bridge this gap, it is proposed that there is a need to employ better projection methods. The collaboration would focus on improving projection methods that would encapsulate 360-view of a virtual world, and projected on devices, according to Digital Trends.
YouTube and Daydream are working on a process they call "equiangular cubemaps" (EAC), which would preserve the contents pixel density uniformly by employing saturation maps. Accordingly, the process will make 360-degree VR experiences to be more realistic.
Google will not stop there but would help others improve on VR. The Mountain View search company proposes what it calls Projection Independent Mesh standard. What it does is to simply tell the video player how to properly project the raw VR information. The method Google says would use a fraction of data that would not require a whole lot of bandwidth or even new hardware.
Presently, users would have to use an Android device to watch videos that employ EAC. Google says support for desktop and iOS will come later. Google, however, adds that unless the content is a specially optimized video, chances are users will not be able to see it, according to Engadget.
Accordingly, the upgrade is setting its sights towards the future of VR rather than merely a quick upgrade.The video below is a sample of a YouTube video with 360-degree view.
