Google's 360 Degree Spotlight Stories Gets The Ball Rolling

Google will post more Spotlight Stories in the future

(Mirror Daily, United States) – Google’s 360 degree Spotlight Stories gets the ball rolling on their interactive videos series to follow on YouTube. The technology could provide with a new way to watch stories. Essentially, you could follow different plots each time you watch it.

This summer, Google introduced the world to 360 degree videos on YouTube. It’s an amazing achievement that immerses the user into the scene, be it real-life or animation. While it’s clearly building a path that will lead to virtual reality, it’s still entertaining even without it. It’s new, fresh, and just another step that shows the amazing leaps forward technology has taken.

With 360 degree videos, users can look around the entire scene in take in every surrounding detail. It’s a beautiful touch, and an interesting new way to see a story unfold. For the sake of the holidays, Google has released the first of their Spotlight Stories, called ‘Special Delivery’.

The story is in true holiday spirit, where viewers can watch a building administrator investigating the odd sounds on the roof, which, of course, is Santa. No spoilers there. Or, the viewers could look around the beautifully animated scene to spot a number of 10 other subplots, 3 potential ways to watch the ending, plus over 60 moments happening, depending on where you’re looking.

‘Special Delivery’ is meant to innovate the technology used for viewing videos on smartphones. It was made with specific Android devices in mind, who have the well-performing tech that will allow them. This include Samsung Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note, HTC One M7, LG G2, LG G3, Nexus 5, Nexus 6, and several others.

Spotlight Stories will be unique in the sense that they will be using your smartphone’s gyroscope and accelerometer. Meaning that the story moves as you move your mobile device. You may use it to glance around the animated environment, and pick where you’re following the story. It’s an amazing way to approach something that was once so simple. There are hidden ‘gems’ everywhere. All you need to do is to move your screen in order to find them.

However, if you do not have one of the aforementioned Android devices, an iPhone would work just fine, along with the mobile web browser or PC. You will have to use the tiny arrows to navigate, and watch ‘Special Delivery’s numerous subplots.

Or, Google is offering the understandable option of using Google Cardboard. It further cements their building path toward virtual reality.

According to Google, this is just first of the many. In fact, it promises that the Spotlight Stories channel on YouTube will become much more populated with time, especially in 2016.

Image source: walyou.com

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Tara Hamilton

Tara has graduated from the University of Oregon, with bachelors degree in Spanish Literature in 2010. She lived in Miami for one year and travelled extensively before settling down in El Paso.