YouTube now supports 360-degree live streaming on its platform. The company made the announcement, making itself the first to launch 360-degree live streaming service. Along with that, YouTube also brought spatial audio to YouTube, which for those who are unaware, is a real life like hearing experience.
As YouTube explains on its blog, spatial audio is “where depth, distance and intensity all play a role.” It same as you listen stuffs in your real life.
YouTube isn’t the first Google product to support spatial audio. It is already available in Google’s VR platform, i.e. Google Cardboard. For those who want to give it a try, you can check the sample playlist here. But please note that, currently spatial audio is only available for on-demand videos, not the live ones. And it also works on Android smartphones with your headphones on.
Now let’s talk about the big news – the 360-degree live streaming.
While many other brands are working to support 360-degree live streaming, but YouTube has successfully made that possible before anyone else. And the process for streaming 360-degree live videos is very easy too. YouTube says, you just need a camera that can record 360-degree videos and you are good to go.
The first 360-degree live stream will be from the music event Coachella.
And that isn’t all, the company has majorly improved the live streams video resolutions too. Starting today, YouTube will support 1440p 60fps resolution, giving users 70 percent more better pixels to consume than the normal HD resolution, which is at 1080p. Thanks to this, YouTube Gaming is now better and more fun to watch. But of course, you will need an excellent Internet connection to enjoy live streams at such high resolutions.
While 360 degree videos work very similar to Virtual Reality, but one of the biggest advantages of watching 360-degree live streams is that you don’t ned any extra technology like an expensive VR headset to watch it. All you need is a phone or computer and you are good to go.
https://youtu.be/7gjR60TSn8Q
With this launch, YouTube is also making its “Live API” available for camera manufacturers who are interested in adapting the 360 Live Streaming functionality. For its creators, YouTube says that, those who are interested but don’t have budget, they can try the 360-degree live streaming or spatial audio at YouTube Space locations.
YouTube is currently the largest video platform on the Internet. It is like Facebook for videos. And while Facebook is doing its best to give YouTube a tough competition, YouTube is making its services more better for the audience.
Hopefully, we will get to see more Google products related to virtual reality at this year’s Google I/O developer conference, which is scheduled to take place next month.