Samsung is not only leading the charge with 360 VR videos, they are practically all alone in doing so. Sure, GoPro is strong with camera support, Kodak via JK Imaging offers the SP360 4K, Ricoh stepped in early too, but Samsung alone has created a true infrastructure for your 360 VR videos.
They have the Samsung Gear 360 camera, the Samsung Gear VR Headset and then laced them all together with the line up of Galaxy and Note Android phones that work with both the camera and for the headset.
Putting a neat bow around all of it with SamsungVR.com, a portal that gives you a place, besides YouTube and Facebook to upload your 360 VR videos.
So where are the rest of the pack, LG has a entry level 360 VR camera, Panasonic just teased with a prototype 360 VR camera. Nikon Keymission is still months away from actual release.
If you want more proof, go straight to the top. In a story on VideoEdge , Nick DiCarlo, vice president of immersive products and virtual reality at Samsung Electronics America, said.
“No matter what kind of game or other content you’re interested in, you watch video,” said DiCarlo, who will be the opening keynote speaker at NewBay Media’s Virtual Reality 20/20 event at The TimesCenter |in New York on Oct. 17.
Samsung is approaching its first full year with a commercially available VR product — the Gear VR, an Oculus-powered headset that connects to compatible smartphones and a curated ecosystem of apps and services. “Video, we thought, was going to be really important for VR,” DiCarlo said of Samsung’s opinion as it analyzed how the market might evolve following the launch of its “Innovator” edition of Gear VR in November 2014, followed by the consumer version about a year later. “We believed in 360-degree video as a way to help VR become really mainstream.”
Inspired by the television model, Samsung’s ambition early on was to release one new VR video a day. It turns out that the company’s goals underestimated its ambitions.
“We thought that VR needed … something new every day,” DiCarlo said. “By the end of 2015, we were releasing five videos a day.” The growing reach of specialized 360- degree cameras and stitching software keeps filling the VR pipeline. And YouTube and Facebook have fully embraced 360 video.
“The creation and release of 360 video has absolutely blown away our expectations for how rich and creative and capable of an ecosystem that was out there,” DiCarlo said.