360-degree video
360-degree videos, also known as surround video,[1] or immersive videos[2] or spherical videos,[3] are video recordings where a view in every direction is recorded at the same time, shot using an omnidirectional camera or a collection of cameras. The term 360x180 can be used to indicate 360° of azimuth and 180° from nadir to zenith. During playback on normal flat display the viewer has control of the viewing direction like a panorama. It can also be played on a display or projectors arranged in a sphere or some part of a sphere.
Playback[edit]
360-degree videos are typically viewed via personal computers, mobile devices such as smartphones, or dedicated head-mounted displays. Users can pan around the video by clicking and dragging. On smartphones, internal sensors such as the gyroscope can also be used to pan the video based on the orientation of the device. Taking advantage of this behavior, stereoscope-style enclosures for smartphones (such as Google Cardboard viewers and the Samsung Gear VR) can be used to view 360-degree videos in an immersive format similar to virtual reality. The phone display is viewed through lenses contained within the enclosure, as opposed to virtual reality headsets that contain their own dedicated displays.[14][15][16]