360-degree video was so last year anyway.
YouTube said Thursday it's partnering with Lenovo, LG and YI Technology on a new technology called a VR180 camera. Yup, instead of 360-degree video that you can spin around and see in any direction, these videos are focused on one direction.
And reading YouTube's announcement about it, it's easy to see why. 360-cameras are particularly hard to shoot since, y'know, they're seeing in all directions, meaning a director can't sit "behind" the camera or even nearby to manage the action.Â
With 180-video, it's almost like you're shooting like normal. It also follows a stat YouTube recently published, noting that most people spent about 75 percent of their time looking at 90 degrees of any 360-degree video. So why go through all that trouble for wasted extra recording, right?
"For creators, you'll be able to set up and film your videos the way you normally would with any other camera," Frank Rodriguez, a product manager at YouTube wrote in a blog post about the announcement. The new technology will also work with Google's Daydream headset because, of course it will. The new cameras will arrive this winter.