Facebook has recently announced that they have begun rolling out 360-degree videos in the News Feed with the help of VR developer Oculus. The move aims to add more immersive content to the News Feeds of users in the most popular social network in the world.
Creating 360-degree videos requires a special set of cameras to record all angles of a scene altogether. This will allow Facebook users to watch a video and choose an angle they would like to see it from. Users can do this by dragging around the video using the mouse cursor. The same can be done with tablets and smartphones by dragging the user's finger - or even just by turning their mobile devices around as the sensors will allow it to do so. Think holding the phone up with the video following accordingly. Take the experience in your point of view.
The videos are first debuting on Android devices and on PCs. iOS support still has not rolled out, so users with Apple devices may just have to wait until Facebook starts rolling out the update for the platform in the following months.There are already a couple of publishers that have shared the new 360-degree Facebook videos. Star Wars, Discovery, GoPro, LeBron James and the Uninterrupted, NBC's SNL, and VICE are just some of the examples of videos published in the social platform, and users will be able to see them in their News Feed. Disney and LucasFilms have also debuted an exclusive 360-degree video experience for their upcoming film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, to tease the fans of the franchise.
Last March, Facebook bought Virtual Reality headset developer Oculus for $2 billion, and 360-degree video may be only the first of many developments we will see out of the biggest social network. Mark Zuckerberg definitely has big plans in store for the users of the platform, and with Oculus developing Virtual Reality for Facebook, experiencing the impossible is soon a reality.
