Sharing Photos in Virtual Reality
Photos are meant to be shared. Most of us share photos with family, friends, communities, and the general public. Lately, we’ve seen more and more panoramas and 360s. We’ll talk about this distinction later. A 360 photo can be interesting in a browser, but not very exciting. It gets even more interesting on a mobile device, and really really interesting on a VR headset. The experience is immersive.
To my count, there were 23 companies that try to help you share 360 experiences. Some photos, some videos, some both. There’s the usual suspects, Google, Facebook, and Yahoo. The rest are made up of some camera manufacturers and some startups. There are really a lot of companies out there to help you share your photos, it’s interesting to note that not all of these are getting into this niche of photos. We have to ask ourselves why is that.
Panoramas have been around for ages. The idea is simple, we all know what it is. Snap some photos and stitch them together where the points meet. You could theoretically use panoramas to create a 360 tour and view it in a VR headset. The problem is the experience is distorted. This is acceptable for some, but takes from the experience. Google VR view works like this. As you pan around you can see the image is stretched to your left and right.
To properly create a representation of our world, and create a virtual reality experience, we need to account for how our brain interprets what we see in our eyes. This is why it’s common to capture our photos in 360 cubic linear. A panoramic photo can be converted to a cube map quite easily. It really depends on how our photo will be consumed. if we will see the entire photo at one time, like a panorama, then it can just be a cylindrical projection. If we will only ever see one portion of the image at a time, then the photo asset should be implemented as a cube map. This is not a hard fact, more of an opinion. it’s important to note that some vendors that create 360 experiences for you, will use cylindrical projections.
Another important part, is how the eye discerns an image in a VR headset. Because the image is so close to our eye, then it appears distorted. The way to counteract this is to distort the image in reverse, This is called barrel distortion. The majority of VR implementations you will see out there don’t do this. This affects the quality of the experience.
The type of headset you are using, will also affect the experience. Generally a really cheap headset doesn’t get you very far, and can border on unusable for some people. In order to present a usable experience, some people will need to adjust focal distance. Another problem is some software vendors will determine IPD (inter-pupillary distance) and phone size by detecting the device. That means if they can’t detect the device, the 360 experience is unusable in the VR headset, without having to make adjustments that don’t always persist.
A really big part of getting VR right, is making sure our screen renders at 60 fps (frames per second). Vendor software that doesn’t do this, is prone to inducing headaches. What this means is that as you move your head around, what you’re seeing doesn’t move at the same speed, it moves too slowly. This messes with your head because what you’re seeing isn’t the same as what you’re feeling. Your head moves fast, while your sight lags behind. This is the perfect recipe for causing headaches and other ailments.
