In adherence to its goal of infusing our News Feeds with more and more immersive content, Facebook has introduced a new feature named 360 video. If haven’t been able to guess what it is, we’re referring to 360-degree videos which we had first witnessed on YouTube earlier this year.
They seem almost magical, as they let you have a complete all-round view of the video you’re watching. It’s as if you have control of where the camera moves while it’s filming. This incredible Facebook attribute hence lets you have a 360-degree experience of certain videos that are made with special cameras and algorithms.
If you’re viewing such a clip on the web, you can use your cursor to drag on the video in order to spin the camera. As for smartphones, you can either employ your fingers or just move to the device around to get a VR-like experience.
Facebook as tied up with a small number of Pages to introduce this project. You can view 360 videos right now on the official Pages of Discovery, GoPro, VICE and more.
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Fans of Star Wars will be pleased to know that an exclusive 360-degree clip has been created by Disney and LucasArts for the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. Google’s YouTube had introduced a similar feature back in March this year. It works in the same way as Facebook’s.
At the moment, the 360 video feature only seems to be working on Android devices, but Facebook has said that it should work on the web version of the social network soon as well. Bringing this trait to iOS would take some time though.