Kelloggs emerged as a supporter of the virtual reality headsets when it started selling Nutri-Gain boxes that you can fold into cardboard VR headsets.
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Yahoo is dipping its toe into virtual reality with changes to its Flickr photo stream service that will facilitate 360-degree viewing of panoramic photos that were announced over the weekend. The company is still one of the largest purveyor of such services, despite the market now awash with competition and they have plans to expand their technical scope soon, leveraging virtual reality technology.
Users wearing a headset, such as the Oculus Rift coming early next year, can view specified 360-degree photos and moves their heads to look around the still vista.
Flickr’s Bertrand Fan told Engadget that many are already posting 360-degree photographs in preparation and that it is a “burgeoning community”. In this early build users looked down at a pair of pink and blue balls for a few moments to skip to the next image.
Fan said Flickr plans to let users who own VR equipment to engage with these photos through its website, by clicking on a VR button or link, and donning a headset. Fan has only been working on the project for a couple of weeks so support is only now available for the Oculus Rift, but he hopes to add the Samsung Gear VR as well as other VR HMD’s down the line. He tells me that some day he wants it to be possible for you to browse through your library and even organize your photos into albums just by waving your hands, Minority Report-style.
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The project is still in an early stage, but once it arrives, Flickr may complement it with a dedicated portal of some sort where 360 degree VR-friendly content is aggregated. He says that there’ll eventually be an Explore Section on Flickr devoted to 360-degree panoramic photos.
