It’s hard to say if 360-degree videos will ever be more than a novelty — especially with the rising popularity of VR — but the folks behind VLC are confident it’ll be around for a while, so much so the developers have pushed out a technical preview of VLC with support for 360-degree videos and photos.
At the moment, builds are only available for Windows and macOS. It’s currently separate from mainline VLC, which indicates the team is keen to simply gather feedback and bug reports for now.
That said, the eventual plan is to merge the technical preview’s functionality into VLC proper, come version 3.0. The current VLC roadmap suggests 3.0 should be ready in mere days, though it’s been pushed back several times in the past.
Anywho, here’s what the 360 tech preview comes with:
Playback of 360 Videos following the Spatial Video spec
Playback of 360 Photos and Panoramas following the Spherical spec
Display modes with Zoom, Little planet and Reverse little planet
Control it with your Mouse and Keyboard
Open Source and Cross-platform, accelerated with OpenGL and Direct3D11
Demo media (two videos and a photo) is available if you don’t have any on hand.
VLC 360° Technical Preview [VLC, via Liliputing]
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