ST PETERSBURG — The future of how you watch videos, even of how you make memories, is here.
Chances are, it's already on the phone in the palm of your hand and you may not even know it!
10News is pulling back the curtain on 360 video and the latest in virtual reality.
“It's gone from this,” said Leroy Bridges holding up a rig with six GoPros facing every direction, “to this, which is just two lenses, hand held.”
Bridges is demonstrating the future of how you will make and keep your memories.
Those camera rigs can capture ***VIDEO*** in three hundred and sixty degrees. And now, they're getting cheap enough for you to buy.
“It's super easy,” Bridges said.
Bridges is the media and interactive director for Visit St. Pete Clearwater.
What we talked about sounds like the future, but the thing is, it's happening right now. And the results are already on your phone.
“I mean we're with our phones every day and what 360 and virtual reality is doing is just tapping into the gyroscope on your smartphone,” Bridges said. “So this technology is literally just one step away from bringing somebody into an immersive environment.”
This is 360 video of what it looks like to drive in the St. Pete Grand Prix shot by the camera rig mentioned above.
You can pull it up on YouTube right now, but you don't just need to watch. You can control the camera and what you see.
And this kind of video that you control is about to take over your Facebook.
Here's how it works. If you see a 360 video in your Facebook feed, all you have to do is click and drag to one side to to adjust what you see. If you're on your phone it's even easier.
All you do is move your body, and it changes the direction you're looking at the video. You can tilt up to see the sky, you can tilt down to see the ground. These are the Blue Angels flying in formation.
“It's thumb stopping. You want to explore, you want to interact,” Bridges said.
360 video on your phone is only the beginning.
“It was basically just a magical moment. I kind of saw my future before me and it's where I am today,” said CEO of VioCore, Logan Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick’s VioCore is a video gaming company that uses full VR headsets to bring virtual reality to life.
“You, get lost inside this virtual environment. You're fully immersed in a full 360 degrees. You can physically move around, grab things, interact with things, and you're lost inside of whatever experience you're doing,” Fitzpatrick said.
Watch our story, you can see what it looks like when you put the headset on. “It can bring you from the boardroom to the beach!”
Beck Besecker who runs VR company Marxent Labs in St. Pete says watch out.
“Can you imagine travel - the opportunity to visit a place before you go there. We'll start shopping in virtual reality. It'll touch and permeate basically every part of life,” he said.
