Google is bringing its interactive, 360-degree videos from Spotlight Stories to YouTube, with a "choose your own" experience in the form of holiday-themed film Special Delivery.
Originally developed by Motorola as a "new storytelling platform," the Spotlight Stories app featuring made-for-mobile 360-degree videos was introduced in late 2013 for Motorola phones, expanding to Android and iOS this year.
The Spotlight Stories app lets you interact with the videos by using sensors in your phones to track your focus within a story, letting you follow individual characters of your choosing, unlike other 360-degree videos that simply let you look around.
However, today, Google announced that it is bringing one of the new interactive Spotlight Stories videos, Special Delivery, created by Aardman Animations of Wallace and Gromet fame, to YouTube.
Going interactive
Currently, most 360-degree videos on YouTube are not interactive, in that you are able to look around the video all around you, but not necessarily interact or change the story.
With Special Delivery on YouTube, Google says it will use your phone's sensors like the Spotlight Stories app does, "so when you move your phone to various scenes, you unlock mini-stories within the story."
It basically creates a 'choose your own adventure' type storytelling, with this particular film including "10 subplots, three potential ways to view the ending, and 60+ moments where you can decide to follow the story in different ways."
Unfortunately, not all smartphones are supported for the interactive element of the film, meaning you won't get the full interactive experience if you don't have one of these Android devices: the Nexus 5 and 6; first and second generation Moto X and Moto G; the Droid Ultra, Turbo and Maxx; Samsung Galaxy S5, Note 3, Note 4, Edge and Tab S2; LG G2 and LG G3; Sony Xperia, as well as Xperia Z2, Z3 and Z3 Compact; and HTC One M7 and M8.
For everyone else (other Android devices, iOS and the web), you can still see the 360-degree film through YouTube 360, or even through Google Cardboard.
You can check out Special Delivery below.
