Google’s YouTube app for Android now supports virtual reality (VR) video in combination with its Cardboard VR viewer.
VR video takes the 360-degree videos you may already be familiar with a step further by using VR techniques like stereopsis and binocular disparity to give you a stronger feeling of immersion (which is what VR is all about, after all).
“VR video gives you a sense of depth as you look around in every direction,” the team behind this feature writes in today’s announcement. “Near things look near, far things look far.”
The company has already worked with a few video creators to launch this feature, so you can already see a demo for a Hunger Games VR experience on YouTube now, as well as an ad for TOMS shoes. You can also find a few more here.
As Google notes, the best way to build these experience yourself is its Jump app (though you still need the hefty GoPro Odyssey 16-camera rig, too).
In addition, the YouTube app now also allows you to play any video on the service using Cardboard “and experience a kind of virtual movie theater.” That’s obviously not quite as exciting as watching real VR content, but it does allow Google to claim that “you’ll now have the largest VR content library right at your fingertips.”
