360-degree media is compelling because VR hacks your field of view (FOV). The view you see is updated in real time as you move your head around, making it seem to have no edges. We started this chapter by describing what 360-degree images are, and how the surface of a sphere would be flattened (projected) into a 2D image, and equirectangular projections in particular. Stereo 3D media includes separate equirectangular views for the left and right eyes.
We began exploring this in Unity by simply mapping a regular image on the outside of a sphere, and were perhaps frightened by the distortions. Then, we saw how an equirectangular texture covers the sphere evenly. Next, we inverted the sphere with a custom shader, mapping the image inside the sphere, making it a 360 photosphere viewer. And, we added video.
Then, we looked at using skyboxes instead of a game object for rendering...