What has YouTube been waiting for to launch their very own VR app? The Daydream View launch.
With the launch of Google’s Daydream View VR headset Thursday, so came a handful of official Google VR apps on day one. Now you can enjoy an easier and more immersive way to experience YouTube with the new standalone app built from the ground up and optimized for VR.
YouTube has already started working with creators, recording artists, and partners who are producing VR videos across a wide variety of genres and interest areas on YouTube. You’ll be able to go swimming with sharks thanks to Curiscope, get a first-hand look at a dinosaur brought to life at the Natural History Museum in London, travel to Belize with StyleHaul, hike a trail a thousand miles away with Daniel and Kelly at Fitness Blender, or watch Tritonal in concert no matter where you are. You can even immerse yourself new content from Buzzfeed, CollegeHumor, Tastemade and more coming soon from partners like NBA and SWooZie according to YouTube.
Available first on Daydream, you’ll need need a Daydream-ready phone like Pixel and the new Daydream View headset and controller to get started. Every single video on the platform becomes an immersive VR experience, from 360-degree videos that let you step inside the content to standard videos shown on a virtual movie screen in the new theater mode. The app even includes some familiar features like voice search and a signed in experience so you can follow the channels you subscribe to, check out your playlists and more.
In addition to YouTube launching on Daydream, Google also launched with VR versions of Street View, Play Movies, Google Photos and Google Arts & Culture. Google Arts & Culture lets you step inside a virtual gallery and view masterpieces from over 50 world-renowned museums. Whether it’s Vincent van Gogh’s landscapes from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rembrandt’s works from the J. Paul Getty Museum, or a collection of the Most Beautiful Cats from RMN-Grand Palais, you can zoom in to see brushstroke-level details. The app is a Preview Edition with more enhancements to come in future updates.
You can check out the full line-up of Daydream View launch content here.
