The evolution of digital photography initiated virtual reality and as a result instigated social media to get involved. Welcome to Facebook 360.
If you’re a photographer, a VR fanatic or merely an active Facebook user, it’s granted that you would want to know about Facebook’s latest 360 Photos feature launched in early June 2016.
In 2003, just three years after camera phones were launched, camera phone sales surpassed digital cameras. Nowadays, some studies suggest that smartphones are accountable for one-fourth of all photos taken. What does this mean for the digital camera industry?
What is Facebook 360 Photos?
Facebook is the first social media network to integrate VR into their platform and introduce to the mass. 360 Photos is Facebook’s latest feature that allows you to view and share photos in 360 degrees. Meaning a user can view the photo from every angle. By manipulating the screen using your finger or tilting your phone in different directions, just as you would turn your head as if you were present at the time the photo was captured.
Facebook 360 Photos allows any user with the appropriate 360 camera, panorama camera, or 360 camera app can share an immersive view of the moments once they captured.
With this highly engaging content, Facebook users can now enjoy a captivating experience while viewing others’ photos, or reliving their own. Allowing them to revisit special moments in time. Facebook 360 photos is an opportunity to create your own personalize virtual reality, and share unique occasions with your loved ones. A
How does it work?
With Facebook 360 Photos, VR content is no longer unattainable. Any Facebook user can view or create a VR using certain 360 camera hardware, using an iPhone’s panorama camera, capturing a photosphere using downloadable free apps available for Android some of which include: Street View and Google Camera.
Facebook managed a milestone as it managed to create an alternative to VR, one that is accessible to all their users. With a simple 3 step process:
- Choose a view that you believe is worth capturing in 360 degrees, where there’s something exciting going on in each concern. Making the photo more captivating and appealing to its audience. Stand in the middle of the moment you wish to document and take a photosphere using your 360 camera, iPhone panorama camera or 360 camera app (which you can download for free).
- Once you have your masterpiece ready, and would like to share it with the rest of the world, you can go ahead and upload on Facebook. If you used your phone to take the photo, you simply upload the photo onto the Facebook app. 360 content is automatically identified by Facebook, thus is transformed into a VR. The photo is marked with a compass for others to recognize it as being VR.
- Explore others’ stunning virtual realities on Facebook. Immerse yourself into different experiences, places and times from where you stand – simply with the touch of a button or through rotating your phone
A visual explanation is included in the infographic below by ereviews.co.uk to understand better how Facebook 360 Photos work.
So, get you hands dirty. Snap that 360 panorama, download the 360 camera app or purchase that 360 camera if you feel inclined to, and get started on creating your own virtual reality.
Don’t forget to share your 360 photos with us!
