Month: January 2016

January 22, 2016
It was inevitable that my purchase of a Ricoh Theta S 360° camera would spur me on to buy more tech. The big hand syndrome, where handheld pictures and video have an out-of proportion hand holding nothing (the camera having removed itself from the picture) was easily fixed by a selfie-stick/monopod.

But it also led me to play with Google Cardboard, which is a deliberately cheap design for a Virtual Reality headset. In particular, video taken with the Theta and uploaded to YouTube can be viewed using Google Cardboard, and as you move your head, the frame of view moves accordingly. It is an amazing immersive effect, even with the crudest resolution of video.

January 10, 2016
As mentioned on Facebook, having played with YouTube 360° videos for a month, YouTube is now reporting that they are not supported on Firefox. Instead it displays the raw file, which without 360° rendering appears horribly distorted.

360° video not being supported is demonstratably false. Below is an embedded YouTube 360° video. Viewing it embedded in my blog page, it displays perfectly. However, if you click through to YouTube using the YouTube icon on the video, you will be told “360° video playback is not supported on this browser.”

January 5, 2016