360-degree video has arrived on Facebook.
The social network is beginning to add the immersive videos to the News Feed, the company announced Wednesday. The videos will be viewable from the web and from Facebook’s iOS and Android apps.
The videos, first announced at Facebook’s F8 developer conference, are filmed with a special camera setup that captures q full 360-degree view of the scene. Much like the 360-degree videos on YouTube,you can change your view of the video by dragging you finger (or cursor, if you’re on a browser) around the screen or holding your phone at a different angle.
The videos will be available on the web and Android app first and will roll out to the iOS app “in the coming months.”
Facebook is partnering with a select group of publishers on the videos including Disney and Lucasfilm, GoPro, Vice and Saturday Night Live to start but says it will open up the videos to more people “who are at the cutting edge of exploring this medium” in the next few days.
The eventual plan, it seems, is to open up the video to all users, not just filmmakers and media companies.
But 360-degree vacation videos may be farther off for most Facebook users. Though consumer level cameras, like RIoch’s new Theta S, are increasingly common as Google and others move to adopt the immersive videos, relatively few people have access to the equipment necessary to make these videos.
The videos also have big implications for the company’s virtual reality ambitions. Facebook users will eventually be able to view the videos through the Oculus Rift and other virtual reality headsets; the videos were created as a collaboration with the Oculus team, The Verge reports.
The social network is also rumored to be working on a standalone video app for the 360-degree clips and executives have made it clear they see virtual and augmented reality as the next big medium for Facebook to tackle.
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