VRBFoto App Makes it Easy to Customize and Interact With 360 Photos
VRBFoto lets users explore and customize 360 photos shot with devices such as the Samsung Gear 360. We go hands on.
If you can’t face a long, expensive trek home for the holidays, why not slap on a VR headset and customize a holiday scene from the comfort of your couch? Add in digital gifts, swap out photo frames on the mantelpiece, and embed a video greeting on the virtual flat-screen TV.
It’s a nice thought (well, for some) and possible thanks to the VRB Home app. But you know you’ll be heading to the airport like everyone else, hopefully not diverted via Denver during a snowstorm. To preserve those moments of family togetherness, make sure you get your hands on VRB’s newest app, VRBFoto, which can capture those heart-warming scenes upon (eventual) arrival for posterity in rich 3D.
PCMag got a sneak peek recently at the VRB offices, which are part of the Samsung Accelerator in New York’s “Silicon Alley”(aka the Flatiron District). This sandbox for entrepreneurs provides access to new Samsung gadgets, financing, HR, office space, marketing, tech support, and most important, a steady stream of snacks and ironic ceramic versions of New York’s well-known Greek coffee cup.
VRB co-founders Christopher Paretti and Christopher D. Kairalla started their company within the accelerator just over a year ago. Both come with deep experience in mobile, gaming, and entertainment tech development from various stints at Nokia, Yahoo, and Megaphone Labs. With VRB Home, available for Android and iOS, you can visit a cartoon-like VR home decked out in a theme of your choice: holiday, food, space, or toys.
Customize your VR home with photos and signage. Then put your phone in a Cardboard or Gear VR-like headset and wander around, or explore by holding your phone in front of you and long-pressing on the screen.
Next up for the team, though, is VRBFoto, which lets users explore and customize 360 photos shot with devices like Samsung’s Gear 360. We strapped on a Samsung Gear VR, slid in a Galaxy Note 5, and took a quick tour of a beta version of VRBFoto. Suddenly, I was standing inside a rich, vibrant, happy scene of a group of friends blowing off steam in the park. It felt so real that I turned around and half expected someone to hand me a kite to fly and a reminder to apply sunscreen.
Then it started to rain, but in sparkly cartoon-like drops. I peered into the photo and saw that several people in the scene were now sporting annotations like hearts or other emoticon-style special effects. Clicking on the menu by my right eye, I called up an onscreen toolkit and started augmenting the scene before me. It was easy and fun, which you can’t always say about mobile apps these days.
This is a definite improvement on the usual VR. The ability to modify and “join in” with the image, leaving behind visual responses, is a very nice touch, and heralds much needed evolution in this space. Users want to be able to customize, share, augment, and extend their experience. Putting on a headset and gazing into a beautiful scene is nice, but it feels good to be able to do stuff once you’re there.
Paretti agreed. “We want people to come back to VR and actually use it,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff out there that’s high-budget, tons of people working on it, they release it, and a handful of people play it, then it’s gone.
“From day one, we’ve been focused on mobile VR because I, personally, like the idea of having a mobile setup in my backpack,” he said. “I’m less keen on the giant rig in a room-type stuff. Although it’s an amazing experience…it’s just not scalable as a business.”
“Here at VRB we started out customizing VR spaces that people could share, and the new VRBFoto is the next iteration of everything we learned doing that,” Kairalla said. “Plus, because it’s on mobile, we can do push notifications, email, and let you know when the shared image has been augmented.”
Sharing makes it engaging and encourages people to return. “The invitation aspect is important because it reflects user behavior within traditional social media networks, and was there right at the beginning of the idea,” continued Paretti. “For us, it’s building on what people love about Instagram and Snapchat but taking it to the next level.”
Both cofounders said they wanted to build an actual VR product, something people will use. And they have. VRBFoto is a good entry point to the world of consumer-friendly VR; it uses baby steps to take people beyond what they know in mobile photo sharing.
To use VRBFoto, you’ll need a Samsung Gear VR and a Gear-compatible smartphone. It’s currently under review in the Gear Store and should be available shortly.
Read more: “VR Is Cool, But This Company Is Making it Cinematic”
Originally published at www.pcmag.com.
