Live VR Video Streaming & 360 Video: All You Need To Know

Video is improving day by day both in terms of the quality of the content and the way it is being delivered across devices. VR or virtual reality-based live streaming is the latest addition to the huge potential of video and its applications are immense. Although the technology is still in its nascent stages, developments such as the Apple Vision Pro and Meta’s VR project promise futures for the technology.

We all must have tried some form of VR technology (if not, go for it) and there are a few observations that come up. In some cases, it seems the angle of the camera is fixed and in other cases, you feel more free to roam around in VR. Well, that is a very primitive difference between VR and 360 video. While both use very different approaches to technology and its deployment, there are similarities too as they give users an easy opportunity to get a larger than live unique video experience.

In this blog, we are going to learn a little more about what is VR-based streaming and how it is different from 360 video and get to know how these technologies developed. The blog will also talk about how you as an individual can integrate VR into your live streaming needs and discuss in detail the possibilities of deploying applications and live streaming solutions around it.

The history of virtual reality (VR) is older than you might think. Major developments have happened in the last few years, that is true but the technology started giving glimpses of its potential and it all started with the introduction of Sensorama in 1956 which is believed to be one of the earliest applications of VR technology. Developed by Morton Heilig, this was even patented in the United States and was defined as a multi-sensory technology. He further improved on his design to create the first VR head-mounted display and called it Telesphere Mask which provided 3D visuals with sound too.

When we talk about multi-sensory technology, a lot of devices were built before that as well. For example, in the 1930s, fiction writer Stanley G created Pygmalion Spectacles that used a pair of goggles that used to let users experience holographic, smell, taste, and touch in a way is a very primitive design of the most used VR gears of today.

The 1960s and 1970s saw a lot of products that tried to explore the power of VR. From the Ultimate Display by Ivan Sutherland to the conceptualization of a digital flight simulator offering 180-degree visuals, VR was beginning to have a strong presence in the video research domain, Krueger’s Videoplace introduced in the 1960s is widely regarded as one of the world’s first interactive VR system capable of identifying user position and delivering visuals accordingly.

The technology was discovered but not named. It is believed that in 1987, Jaron Lanier, founder of visual programming lav coined the term Virtual Reality and started research on creating standalone virtual reality devices. They were the first ones to sell VR goggles with their product Eye