YouTube added 360-degree footage to its video-sharing service earlier this year, but now its Android app also provides full support for Google's Cardboard-compatible VR viewers including the Mattel View-Master. Cardboard headset users can watch any 3D video even if it is not in full VR. The New York Times also launched its Cardboard app.
YouTube has a playlist of full 360-degree content. A tiny Cardboard icon appears besides the full-screen toggle.
Users must tap the icon and insert the smartphone into the Cardboard viewer. They can then watch a full VR video.
YouTube now also allows people to load any VR video in a Cardboard-compatible user interface (UI). It shrinks the video clip and then mirrors the footage on the two halves of the screen, creating the visual effect that the smartphone screen is about one foot in front of the user's eyes, according to Android Police.
YouTube's two new features were included in YouTube's latest update. They are also being added to devices on the Google Play Store.
In other Google Cardboard news, The Times rolled out its new "NYT VR" app on November 5, Thursday, according to Mashable. It was introduced with two feature films. One is about the global refugee crisis, and the other is about the production of a New York Times Magazines cover.
The NYT app puts newspaper subscribers on the front line of big stories. They can be in the middle of the people and environment of a worn-torn country, and share the experience of an artist photographing from a helicopter flying over the Manhattan district of New York City.
Here is the NYT's Walking New York VR video: