VLC Media Player Previews 360-degree Video Support

VideoLAN has released a technical preview of VLC Media Player 3.0 with 360-degree video support. The new build handles videos following the Spatial Video format, and photos and panoramas following the Spherical spec (the official test page has sample files). More on this: The files play back just like any other video, but you can now left-click and drag within the screen or use the numeric keypad arrows to look around. VideoLAN says there are multiple display modes -- Zoom, Little Planet and Reverse Little Planet -- although we couldn't immediately see how they were activated. This initial release is only available for Windows and Mac, but eventually 360-degree support will arrive for Android, iOS and Xbox One, with VR headset support likely to arrive in 2017.

But does it run on linux?

[NotInHere]

No it doesn't.

Re:

[macxcool]

No it doesn't.

Is this true? If so, that's pretty crummy.

Re:

[macxcool]

OK. I answered my own question. Of course it isn't true. Download the tarball and compile away ;-)

Do a barrel roll!

[jfdavis668]

Finally, you can do a 360 in VLC.

Re:

[MikeDataLink]

I hate 360 videos on YouTube

You need to try them with a VR Headset. That makes lots of these 360 videos go from dull to mesmerizing.

If I wanted a headache

[Hognoxious]

If I zqnted q heqdqche

Thanks, Windows 8.1, for randomly fucking about with the keyboard layout AGAIN.

Where were we? Ah, yes. If I wanted a headache, I'd just bang my head against the wall.

But...

[colin_faber]

Still no useful bookmark support. Really the only reason I haven't switched mplayer / smplayer on my HTPC.

What's the big deal with 360 degree images?

[OneHundredAndTen]

While I am sure there exist specialized applications for this, I fail to see what ordinary consumers get from it. The 360 degree images tend to be distorted, they add extraneous, irrelevant material, and the all around coverage makes the images in general less intuitive and realistic. This is seems to be the current, largely useless and unrequested fad, just as the ridiculous fake 3D TV was a few years ago.

Re:

[BlackHawk-666]

They look just great on my Oculus Rift DK2, and no doubt just as good or better on newer gear.

Re:

[MikeDataLink]

They look just great on my Oculus Rift DK2

THIS! Lots of people keep whining about 360 videos and photos being dumb. Put your VR headset on and try them again. That's where the magic happens.

Now if only...

[Chris Katko]

Now if only they'd bother to fix the of tons bugs, and terrible GUI.

As someone who has literally used VLC for thousands of hours of content: I've accrued over a dozen bugs. I'm putting together a video on it.

A few gems:

- Complete disrespect for monitor gamma. Everything looks better in MPC. In VLC, everything is white washed.

- Incorrect use of streams. Ignores "disabled audio streams" which exist as secondary streams (other languages, as opposed to 5.1 and 2.0 of the primary language). VLC p

Youtube Videos

[watice]

Will this work with 360 videos downloaded from youtube? If so, then you have a bunch of content already available.