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Here's some more information about Google VR 180: https://blog.google/products/google-vr/world-you-see-it-vr18....

It seems to me that Google has scaled back efforts on 360 video. There are lots of difficulties with 360:

- Large file sizes (hundreds of gigabytes to terabytes of data)

- Inadequate camera quality (even 8k video looks low-quality)

- Bandwidth limitations (in streaming and processing)

- Film-making and making use of all 360 degrees

These problems aren't going to be solved within the next year, so Google decided to go 180 as a stopgap for now.



More like >90% of the time, no one ever looks more than 180 behind them, so much of the extra information is wasted, but costs more to produce.


Half the bandwidth to serve, creators can have their lighting and equipment out-of-frame, and no one looks over there anyway. Win, win, and meh, which adds up to win.


Also, 360 3D video is impossible with the current software, so 360 videos are always a bit flat.


There is 360 3D, it's just hard (and expensive) to get access to. Examples:

- https://vr.google.com/jump/

- https://facebook360.fb.com/facebook-surround-360/

- https://ozo.nokia.com/vr/

- https://www.lytro.com/immerge




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