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Panoramic video
Set up a panoramic video

Introduction to panoramic videos

A panoramic video is a video that shows up to 360° views of a captured sceneA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info
See in Glossary. Unity’s panoramic video feature enables you to:

  • Include real-world 360° videos.
  • Reduce scene complexity in VRVirtual Reality More info
    See in Glossary     by including a pre-rendered backdrop video instead of real geometry.

To use the panoramic video features in the Unity Editor, you must have access to panoramic video clips, or know how to author them.

Panoramic video layouts

Unity supports 180° and 360° videos in either an equirectangular layout (longitude and latitude) or a cubemapA collection of six square textures that can represent the reflections in an environment or the skybox drawn behind your geometry. The six squares form the faces of an imaginary cube that surrounds an object; each face represents the view along the directions of the world axes (up, down, left, right, forward and back). More info
See in Glossary layout (6 frames).

Equirectangular 2D videos

Equirectangular 2D videos have an aspect ratioThe relationship of an image’s proportional dimensions, such as its width and height.
See in Glossary of exactly 2:1 for 360 content, or 1:1 for 180 content.

This layout flattens a spherical image onto a 2D plane, which makes it possible to display 360° content in a video.

The horizontal axis represents the full 360° field of view around the viewer. The vertical axis represents the 180° field of view from directly above to directly below the viewer.

Equirectangular 2D video
Equirectangular 2D video

Cubemap 2D videos

Cubemap 2D videos have an aspect ratio of 1:6, 3:4, 4:3, or 6:1, depending on face layout.

A cubemap disassembles a cube’s faces, lays them flat, and maps the 360° video content onto the faces. This projection enables the display of 360° content in a video.

When the engine rebuilds the cubemap into a cube, it recreates the scene as a seamless panoramic view.

Cubemap 2D video
Cubemap 2D video

3D panoramic videos

3D panoramic videos are videos that combine up to 360° panoramic views with stereoscopic 3D content to simulate depth. You can use 3D panoramic videos to create immersive environments in virtual realityVirtual Reality (VR) immerses users in an artificial 3D world of realistic images and sounds, using a headset and motion tracking. More info
See in Glossary (VR) with less overhead than actual geometry.

To create 3D videos, specialized camerasA component which creates an image of a particular viewpoint in your scene. The output is either drawn to the screen or captured as a texture. More info
See in Glossary capture two slightly different perspectives of a scene (one for each eye). During post-processingA process that improves product visuals by applying filters and effects before the image appears on screen. You can use post-processing effects to simulate physical camera and film properties, for example Bloom and Depth of Field. More info post processing, postprocessing, postprocess
See in Glossary, software formats these perspectives into layouts like Side-by-Side or Over-Under.

Layout Description
Side-by-Side The left eye’s content is placed on the left side of the frame, and the right eye’s content is placed on the right side.
Over-Under The content is arranged vertically, with the left eye’s content positioned on top and the right eye’s content on the bottom.

When you set up your 3D panoramic videos in Unity, Unity detects which eye is currently being rendered and uses Single Pass Stereo rendering to send this information to the SkyboxA special type of Material used to represent skies. Usually six-sided. More info
See in Glossary or Panoramic shaderA program that runs on the GPU. More info
See in Glossary. The shader contains the logic to select the correct half of the video based on this information when Unity renders each eye’s content in VR.

For setup information, refer to Set up your 3D panoramic video.

Limitations and optimizations for panoramic videos

When you work with panoramic video in Unity, you need to be aware of some restrictions and optimization requirements to ensure smooth playback.

Optimize your visuals

The panoramic video feature is resource-intensive. For the best visual results use panoramic videos in the highest possible resolution. For example, 4K or 8K resolution.

System limitations

Large videos require more computing power and resources for decoding. Most systems have specific limits on maximum video decoding resolutions. For example, many desktop hardware video decoders have a limit of 4K resolutions. Mobile hardware video decoders are often limited to 2K or less which limits the resolution of playback in real-time on those platforms.

3D content

3D content requires double either the width or the height of the video. This corresponds to Side-by-Side or Over-Under layouts.

You can transcode your video to produce lower resolution versions of panoramic videos. However, be careful not to introduce bleeding at the edge between the left and right 3D content, or, between cube map faces and adjacent black areas. In general, author videos in power-of-two dimensions and transcode to other power-of-two dimensions to reduce visual artifacts.

Additional resources

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Panoramic video
Set up a panoramic video
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