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10 Years Ago This Week: YouTube Launches Immersive 360 video

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing tech highlights from 2015 that still resonate 10 years later. This update was for the week ending March 14, 2015.

Ten years ago this week YouTube launched 360-degree video. 

YouTube even worked with camera companies to make sure their 360-degree cameras were compatible with the platform.

 If you were wearing a virtual reality headset you would be totally immersed, and be able to look all around you as the video played.  
 At launch, the videos would only play correctly in the Android app or in Chrome on the web. But it was a step towards "virtual reality becoming a reality".

Today 360-degree video is available in the YouTube mobile app for Android or iOS, or in the Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Opera browser. If you view the videos in a browser, you can use your cursor to drag them around. 

 
The original 360 video demo playlist. Try it!

The view from 2025


Highlighted VR videos at www.youtube.com/@360/featured 

Of course 360-degree video was just the first step.

In April 2016 (just in time for the Coachella Valley Music Festival), YouTube launched 360 degree live streaming with spatial audio. 

And then in November 2016 YouTube VR launched, along with Google's Daydream VR Headset. It not only used 360-degree video, but it was also stereoscopic. Google also offered cheap Google Cardboard viewers, if the Daydream was too pricey.

The Daydream headset never really caught on, and was discontinued in 2020.

But you can check out the latest 360 VR videos on YouTube or the YouTube app, or the Meta Quest or PICO 4 headset. Although it's probably notable that the "latest" video playlists haven't been updated in nearly two years.

Where will YouTube go from here? A complaint is that YouTube VR doesn't have the best spatial audio, doesn't support 8K video for all devices, and isn't available on all headsets. YouTube has had an app "on the roadmap" for the Apple Vision Pro since early 2024, and it's not clear if that will ever launch.

But Google is working with Samsung on new VR headsets running Android XR, and there is speculation a device will be announced at Google I/O in May. And when it is announced, it will almost certainly let you immerse yourself in YouTube videos.

References

YouTube Creator Blog, 13 March 2015: A new way to see and share your world with 360-degree video.

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