BBC's latest app is a home for its VR experiments
The app makes the BBC's interesting side projects more accessible.
The BBC is forever playing around with new forms of storytelling, but its many experimental projects can be hard to keep track of. A 360-degree video might be published on YouTube and Facebook, for example, while an animated VR tale might launch first on the Oculus Rift before being ported into a standalone mobile app. Bookmarking the BBC Taster website is one way to keep tabs on what's new, but now the broadcaster has launched an iOS and Android app to make its projects more visible and easily accessible on smartphones.
The BBC Taster VR app doesn't have a great deal to offer on day one. You can download an immersive trailer for an upcoming BBC Three documentary about gun crime, One Deadly Weekend in America, as well as some interactive 360-degree video from the Planet Earth II crew. More experiments will be added to the platform regularly and won't be limited to your standard VR experiences -- the BBC also intends to showcase its work in dynamic binaural (3D) audio, for instance.
BBC Taster exists so the public can provide feedback on new types of content and innovative formats, which will drive what the broadcaster pursues in the future. Making experiments more accessible can only help with that, and the app will give the BBC additional analytics like a heat map that shows what draws the attention of the user within a VR experience. "This will help BBC developers and editorial teams learn more from their content, helping them to refine storytelling techniques in this emerging medium," the announcement reads.
