It is becoming increasingly evident how important virtual reality is becoming as an industry. To see how evident it is, you only have to look at the number of manufacturers who are literally lining up to jump aboard the platform and bring to market either their own VR solution or at the very least, software and services which can be used with the increasing number of VR headsets that are coming through. A momentum which is only likely to increase going forward as well.
While most of the big name products seem to place a focus on the gaming (or general media consumption) aspects of virtual reality, it seems industries which are equally likely to benefit from the virtual reality movement is services like property management and tourism. Both of these markets have always made use of images and videos to lure customers in and it seems virtual reality is certainly the next step in creating content which can offer the viewer/buyer/traveler a better way to get a closer look at a property rental, vacation destination, beach, hotel or otherwise. In fact, Google has today announced the open souring of a new feature which will certainly be beneficial to any app or website developer who is looking to include more virtual reality content going forward.
VR View is Google’s latest announced developer tool and is one which will essentially stitch together 360 images or videos, in a view to creating interactive VR experiences which can then be better consumer through VR headsets and viewers. For Android apps, this will mean including “a few lines of code” to the Cardboard SDK, while website developers can include the content quite easily by adding the ‘interactive experience’ as an iframe command. As this has been released as open source, VR View is free to be further modified in any way by anyone to better match their individual needs or the needs of their apps or sites. Those interested in reading more about VR View or how to include the feature on an Android app or website, head through the source link below to the Google announcement – where you can also grab the GitHub link.