YouTube has inspired many people in creating creative and attractive videos. And with mobile devices and internet availability in more places, practically anyone from anywhere can create something for billions of others to laugh, cry or relate to.
On its blog on November 10th, 2016, YouTube wants to continue that effort to the next level by introducing YouTube's VR experience.
YouTube VR experience comes with a set of apps for Google's Daydream View VR headset-controller combo. Initially, the app that is only available through Google's Daydream VR platform.
To use it, users just need to install the app to a Daydream-ready phone like Google's Pixel, and plug it to the headset-controller.
Users can then enjoy the VR experience from the entire YouTube videos, including standard and 360-degree ones.
Using the Theater mode, users will see video in the main portion of the screen. Information such as the title and description will float alongside the clip. Using the controller, users can see video queues and interact with the video.
"We've gone from rectangular video to 360 to 360 stereoscopic with positional audio. We're looking at how do we continue to push the format forward," said John Harding that leads the engineering for emerging experiences in YouTube. "We want to push the boundaries of what it means to have immersive content. Whether that means six degrees of freedom, being able to move around, or being able to interact with things, it's definitely a direction that we’re exploring."
Entertaining the eye is one thing, the next is the audio and capabilities. YouTube VR supports voice search and spatial audio. Users can sign in to their account to browse for their subscriptions and playlists.
In its blog, YouTube recommends its users to check out VR-ready clips like cooking videos from Tastemade, news footage from HuffPost RYOT, and others. YouTube also brings users to experience things they may not want to do in real life, such as swimming with sharks or get up close and personal with a band of gorillas.
"The key was to make it feel like a real physical environment without drawing your attention away from the content," said Harding.
So far, Google's VR experience has only been able to deliver things as far as its Cardboard headsets can go. But with YouTube VR and its hardware, Google wants to bring that experience further up.
While the experience looks great, head tracking is somehow accurate and software interface is catchy, browsing from one video to another and managing video queues are still difficult at some points. Searching for videos can also be difficult, but the problem can be avoided using voice search.
At the meantime, a lot of the immersive videos being created for YouTube VR are still in the experimental phase