A few years ago 360° Video was “extremely hot” and considered a profitable business model.
Is it?
Who is still working with 360 audio/video?
(Just curious …)
Fredo
Dit it once, but on more venue style projects. So not a real head tracking one.
But as far as i can see it, beside some game audio stuff and some special venues it seems dead.
For me in germany, in TV and Venue orientated business, it never was or even felt a real option.
what about you ? Had you any “real” stuff in that?
best
For what it’s worth: From my POV as music mixer this market is inexistent. I did a lot of surround, AURO and (increasingly) ATMOS stuff during most recent years, even Ambisonics, but not a single 360° mix.
… might be different for people working in AV media, though.
Nope.
Never had a request for it.
And I never digged into the technology because I didn’t believe there was a business model to be found.
But I am an old fart, and old farts often lose touch with reality, hence my question. 
Fredo
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I went to an interactive “festival” type conference here maybe 6-7 years ago, and even then I was partially unimpressed. It covered music, interactive semi-linear fiction (to picture) as well as 360 stuff. There really wasn’t a lot of content available to see and headsets and consumer systems were clunky.
My friend got like a job or two in advertising but that was it. All work I get is still 5.1 or stereo. No requests at all for 360. And I don’t hear people talking about it either.
But I’m probably about as old and farty as Fredo so…
I work doing a lot of location sound and post for 360 content. It has definitely had its ups and downs over the last 6 years. Most of the work I do for my clients is internal training videos or videos used for trade shows/recruitment. I have also worked with a good number of clients using 360 for documentary films and I think this is a field in which it can excel. Overall, it’s stayed pretty consistent at about a 1/3rd of my work and I think with more and more people getting headsets the demand will be there especially for training and internal videos.
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What type of headsets are you seeing people getting? Is it mainly Augmented Reality stuff for the professional fields or is it mixed with more consumer stuff and even down to “phone setups”?
For corporate a mix of Quest 2 and HTV Vive Focus enterprise. Lots of quest 2 on the consumer side of things. I’m sure the pandemic pushed sales up as well. I do still see phone setups with custom branded google cardboards for mass marketing and mailing to prospective clients. The push for AR has declined rapidly. It was being pushed massively but I no longer hear it talked about as much. I think it’s out of its hype cycle since magic leaps demise.
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I was just getting ready to play around with some VR audio stuff and when I went to set it up, it looks like the video player that Cubase uses has been discontinued and is no longer available to download. I know there were issues in the past with Quicktime and Steinberg had to write their own video engine, but that was more a safety issue and you could still download the no longer supported program from Apple. In this case the software page is gone from the GoPro site and a search for VR Player on that site comes up blank. I was going to post this as a new topic, but since at least one person here seems to be using Cubase for this I figured I might get a quicker response here.
Noise Makers provides a free 360 monoscopic video player called Ambi Eyes.
It is compatible with VR headsets (on PC).
It synchronises to the DAW via the plugin Ambi Head HD.
You can get the free demo of Ambi Head HD, insert it into a track in Cubase, then press stop/start, it should ensure the synchronisation with Ambi Eyes.
Hope this helps.