360 Videos for Portals
With a 360 camera, take a (short) video clip. Example: see the YouTube 360 video here: https://youtu.be/DBL-Lt0KNZY
Note: in a browser (Chrome, FireFox, Safari) you have to swipe to look around. In the YouTube app on your phone, you just point the phone in the direction you want to look inside the 360. You might have to install and use the YouTube app in order to see the full 360 view.
Importing into Hoverlay we can walk into the Portal here: https://hoverlay.io/space/y9ei and look all around (left, right, and a bit up / down). The ceiling and floor have been somewhat distorted.
Notes:
Directly importing the 360 video can result in a distorted but FLAT video (no looking around).
This is what it looks like initially https://youtu.be/tqchG2gM7aE before it was processed..
To produce the final 360 video for YouTube, I had to install the (free for Mac, Windows software is only for device owners) insta360 studio software: https://www.insta360.com/download/app/studio2019, edit the video, and export in "360 format" instead of "flat video" so apps that are 360 aware (also referred to as "spherical video") . This software allows the user to set the bitrate (and control the resulting file size). Notice that the resolution is much worse than the original 25 Mbps bitrate to 3 Mbps so the file size is below the 20 Mbyte limit for free (personal) accounts in Hoverlay. Even at 18.5 Mbytes, Hoverlay rates this space as "Heavy" -- not really suitable for cellular data usage, although on WiFi it could be tolerable. This is only and example of what can be done, not necessarily a recommended way of presenting video.