Google introduced a new VR experience that is essentially a 360-degree panorama app, but instead, they’re calling it a “perfectly imperfect VR-ish camera app for Android” that lets users take pictures “on the inside of a 360-degree sphere” by using the phone’s gyroscope and accelerometer.
The app is on Android first, and with Google often building iOS apps first many people are now asking “when this is coming to iOS,” instead of “when is this coming to Android.”
The apps onboarding, explaining how to use the app, is effortless and easy to understand. Once you get the idea down, you’ll just tap on the screen to ‘spray’ the sphere to create a VR 360-degree image. You’re able to use the front-facing camera for selfies, but also the rear camera to capture your surroundings. When your capturing images it feels a lot like your spray painting the sphere, but the downside is pictures are blurry, and you’re never going to get a perfect 360-degree panorama like you would with other photosphere apps. You will get a fun image that is one of a unique but also something you can share with friends on social media and Facebook.
They’re doing the experiment to have user created content for Daydream, but also to start normalizing 360-degree images and video across the web. Google took a wild approach by allowing creative and freeform pictures, instead of working with in-focus or blur-free panorama images. It means you can create amazing VR pics that include selfies or creative are that work in Daydream or Cardboard.
Tell us in the comments below what you think about Sparyscape, and whether you’re going to use the app on Android!