360-degree photos and videos are a different way of using virtual reality that is accessible to consumers today, both in terms of experiencing them as well as producing and publishing them. Viewing prerecorded images requires much less compute power than rendering full 3D scenes, and this works very well on mobile phone-based VR in particular. In this chapter, we will explore the following topics:
- Understanding 360-degree media and formats
- Using textures to view globes, photo spheres, and skyboxes
- Adding 360-degree video to your Unity projects
- Writing and using custom shaders
- Capturing 360-degree images and video from within your Unity app
Note that the projects in this chapter are separate and not directly required by the other chapters in this book. If you decided to skip any of it or not save your work, that's okay.
