Friday, September 22, 2017

Opera browser adds 360-degree virtual reality support in version 49


Opera is adding support for 360-degree virtual reality video in its Developer browser version 49. This new developer update comes with a built-in VR 360 player for headsets such as HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and other OpenVR compatible devices.

Although VR headsets have been around for a while now, associated content hasn’t taken off to the extent we’d expect. Besides, pairing the headset has been a cumbersome process as well. Opera is trying to fix that with the new developer update.

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“The rapid growth of the 360 videos and soon WebVR bring an exciting revolution for VR content on the web. However, with limited software support, it has been difficult for VR headset owners to easily enjoy the fast growing library of 360-degree content on Youtube, Facebook and other video portals,” Opera said.

“So far they had to use inconvenient workarounds: download the video first, including spending time on finding a “download” button and waiting for the download, then quit the browser and launch a separate player app. It wastes time and bandwidth on blindly downloading a video. Sounds ancient.”

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And so, Opera is focusing on creating and embedding direct VR playback into the browser. This functionality enables users to watch virtual reality videos, and standard 2D videos, instantly through their VR headsets. Which means, the new Opera developer version comes with VR 360 player feature enabled and will automatically detect an installed VR headset. When a user browses through a video, a button above the video (next to Opera’s video pop out button) labeled ‘Watch in VR’ will appear. Click on that, and VR away! Needless to say, besides 360-degree videos, it was also support the standard videos, which is the 2D/180-degree ones.




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