Article
You can now view interactive, 360-degree videos on the new Apple TV | Mashable
From the horse’s mouth
Littlstar
My Comments
Increasingly the 360-degree “virtual-tour” video is being seen as part of exhibiting a location or marketing a product. Even real-estate agents are using them as a tool to show off properties for sale, while TV serials are using them to give their fans a look-see in to the environments that the shows are set in.
But they are typically offered on Web pages that are best viewed in a browser with you moving your mouse up and down or dragging your finger up and down around a touchscreen or trackpad to pan around. You may find that you zoom using your mouse’s thumbwheel or pinch in and out on a touchscreen or trackpad. Similarly navigating may require you to simply click or tap on where you want to go.
In some cases, they may also play properly with virtual-reality headsets of the Oculus Rift kind if you use an app for the device.
But what about viewing these 360-degree videos on that large-screeo TV or video projector. This may work if you throw that Web page on the large TV screen but you may not be lucky with some virtual-reality or 360-degree plugins working properly on the large screen.
Litlstar have tackled this issue through developing an app for the 4th-generation Apple TV set-top device that shows the 360-degree videos on the big screen. This exploits the Apple TV’s new remote control which has a trackpad by you using that trackpad to pan around.
This can be exploited on other smart-TV and video-peripheral platforms especially where some of these platforms are implementing gyroscopic remote controls or remote controls that implement multiple D-pads. Similarly, a games console of the XBox or PlayStation variety could be used as a tool to show the virtual-reality videos on a large screen.
It could also allow for one to watch some video content yet have an opportunity to “break off” in to a personal “walk-through” of that scene or building, yet be able to return to where they left off in the video content.
Who knows when Android TV or a subsequent Freebox décodeur will end up exploiting these abilities to enhance video content.
