Categories
Android App Development AR / VR

Showing a 360° Photo in Google Daydream VR based on Unity, Part 2

In the first part of the article, we captured a 360° photo using a Samsung Gear 360 camera. Now, we’ll create a new Unity project for Android. Using the right shader and material, we can assign the cylindric projection to a Skybox. This is the perfect 360° photo viewer for Unity, which can then be easily deployed to a Google Daydream / Cardboard VR headset!

Loading the 360° Photo in Unity

The Skybox in Unity is the easiest way to show a 360° photo in VR. Note that 360° 2D and 3D video will be supported out-of-the-box in the upcoming Unity 2017.3 release, according to the current Unity roadmap.

For setting up a 360° panorama as a Skybox, the following guides are extremely helpful if you need further pointers: SimplyVR, Tales from the Rift. The instructions below outline all the necessary steps you need to create your own 360° photo viewer in Unity!

Categories
Android App Development AR / VR

Showing a 360° Photo in Google Daydream VR based on Unity, Part 1

Capturing a 360° photo / video and viewing it in VR is one of the most immersive use cases. As the user is part of a captured real world, the virtual experience is the most life-like possible.

In this article, I will show how to capture a 360° photo using the new Samsung Gear 360 camera (2017 version), then load the photo into a Unity project for Google Daydream / Cardboard to view it in VR on an Android phone (in this case, the Google Pixel 2).