Nepenthes Sloth is going to be producing a range of 360 degree videos. Here is a guide on how to best enjoy them:
Guides below to playing 360 videos on:
PLEASE REMEMBER TO LIKE VIDEO AND SUBSCRIBE TO MY CHANNEL
It's free and easy to do and helps and encourages me so much, as do any (nice) comments!
On your PC/Laptop:
Open up the video and it should automatically be seen in 360 and start playing. The joy of 360 is that now, using your mouse or the white round icon, with little arrows inside, in the top left corner of the screen, you should be able to change the angle of view.
The video path will be set, you can’t change that, but you can view at any angle from that path and you can zoom in or out while the video is playing. You can pause the video and have a look around too. For best immersive results set the video to loop. This is very easy to do, just right click inside the view screen and loop should be one of the option.
There might be an annoy little click and moment black screen between loops, as it’s not totally smooth, but it’s a lot better than having to hit play every time.
The viewing resolution might be fun to play with. Youtube generally works out what is best but the Nepenthes Sloth 360 videos should have the very top resolution youtube can have available at time of writing this, which is 8k, which will give the equivalent of a 4k quality image on the screen at any point when you zoom about. You should see wonderful image quality when set at 8k. However, the draw back is that 8k needs a lot of internet bandwidth, so if your connection isn’t brilliant it will stutter at 8k and not play smoothly, lowering the resultion will help it play smoothly. However a fun thing to do, if this is the case, is still go to 8k and pause. On the paused frame you should now be able to zoom in and out (on PCs with the central mouse wheel for example) and study that freeze frame moment in the fractal world in full 8k quality, and see things you might miss flying past them. The bottom right of the video has the resolution settings; just experiment to see what works for you.
Viewing on phone:
The joy of viewing on a phone is that you can see the different angle of view by rotating and moving the phone itself. This also means it can work in a VR headset. However it might not appear to have 360 viewing option this when you fist open the video, in which case, before you start the video as you normally would, press the ‘Open App’ button at the top of the youtube screen. It should now open in a 360 rotate available mode (see image below)
If for some reason you don't have this option, then you may have to download a 360 video viewing app from your app store.
Headsets will give far more of an immersive feel if you have any. If you haven’t then there is a very cheap option (approximately £5 or less) for a cardboard version. They are commonly available on line.
Another option is a basic brand VR headset; typically £20-30 starting cost.
You should also be able to use your playstation headset, it’s a case of setting them up to play youtube videos.
Looping can be more involved on a phone. You may have to have a youtube account (easy to set one up if you don't have one), login to it and save the video to a playlist. Then open up the video from the playlist and you now have a loop button option. Click here to watch video about how to loop your video on a phone ....if you are watching the video logged in to a youtube account then please like the Nepenthes Sloth video and subscribe to my youtube channel. It's free and very easy to do and helps and encourages me so much!
Playstation VR:
I've tested this out (and it works, my 360 videos look fab!!). I was a bit stuck with it at first until I realised it wasn't managed by directly going to youtube but, solved, by first downloading the 'youtube on playstation' app. on to your playstation. It's free and easy to find in the playstation store. This video here shows you how:
Some notes:
a) You get an option when first going into youtube VR or Normal - to enjoy the immersive experience choose the VR not the normal (which is just a flat screen viewed in the headset).
b) The only drawback was I couldn't work out how to set automatic loop (like on the right click on the screen). If anyone knows how please contact me. However if you have the PS controller in hand you can make it repeat almost as quickly with just 2 button presses.
c) Another issue is that only PS5 and PS4 Pro play the 8k version but the next version down, as you'd see in PS4, still isn't too bad, although not as sharp as the 8k
Sound:
All Nepenthes Sloth 360 videos will have a specially composed and recorded sound track. To enjoy this to the full (quality and stereo effects) it is advised to have your device linked to earphones/headphones.