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Virtual Reality Audiences Stare Straight Ahead 75% of the Time

posted by CoolHand on Monday June 19 2017, @04:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-look-back dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

YouTube's revealed the secret to making an engaging virtual reality video: put the best parts right in front of the audience so they don't have to move their heads.

Google's video vault offers that advice on the basis of heat maps it's created based on analysis of where VR viewers point their heads while wearing VR goggles. There's just such a heat map at the top of this story (or here for m.reg readers) and a bigger one here.

The many heat maps YouTube has made lead it to suggest that VR video creators "Focus on what's in front of you: The defining feature of a 360-degree video is that it allows you to freely look around in any direction, but surprisingly, people spent 75% of their time within the front 90 degrees of a video. So don't forget to spend significant time on what's in front of the viewer."

YouTube also advises that "for many of the most popular VR videos, people viewed more of the full 360-degree space with almost 20% of views actually being behind them." Which sounds to El Reg like VR viewers are either staring straight ahead, or looking over their shoulders with very little time being devoted to sideways glances.

A video channel wants people to treat VR like video. Hmmm. Perhaps the answer to their question is in the question: people should be considered "participants" instead of an "audience."

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @10:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @10:06PM (#528178)

    Oh just wait, it will take a while for people to create the content. It will be a different approach to entertainment, and likely one that requires some choices to be made.

    Off the top of my head I see two basic choices for movie makers:
    1) allow viewers to pause, go back, or otherwise explore the depths of your content that won't fit in one frame during a continuous timeline. Want to see every fight in the superhero movie instead of highlights for each hero? We can do that!
    2) allow viewers to change view but not timeline. That way every time they watch the movie they can explore different facets.

    You can mix/match those two choices throughout the movie

    This allows content creators to tell a much deeper story that I think would really rope people in.