8K video playback for PC Based Headsets
For playback of 8K footage on PC Based VR Headsets or Oculus Quest please read the articles below
Best Video Resolution for PC Based VR Headsets
Best Video Resolution for Oculus Quest 2
8K tiled Streaming for Mobile VR Headsets
Tiled streaming in any shape or form is undoubtedly the way forward in the coming years to push resolution beyond the 5.7K mark for mobile devices and make high resolution (live) streams available. Of course, we will first have to wait for mainstream VR hardware capable of displaying 8K to arrive but we know both the Khronos Group, Fraunhofer Institute, and numerous start-ups like Tiledmedia and Visbit are working on tiled streaming so we will see what will be the dominant technology when the time comes. The biggest bottleneck at the moment is still the (post-)production pipeline. Luckily our camera issues are a thing from the past with the availability of cameras like the impressive Insta360 Titan.
Unfortunately, most post-production pipelines are not remotely equipped to handle vast amounts of unprocessed 8K video files, let alone 11K. You’ll have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get your pipeline and hardware up to speed to handle even the simplest editing tasks. Minor compositing like rotoscoping or some simple rig removal will be insanely expensive and slow. The last difficulty is that most common editing programs like Premiere and After Effects barely support a dedicated 8K workflow as of now. So you’ll have to resort to more expensive and complicated solutions like Nuke to get a stable workflow.
We have written extensively about video compression for VR headsets in multiple blogs; below, you will find the two most recent ones with our latest findings and insights.
Pixel Perfect Part 1: Headjack 360 video Cloud Encoding profiles
Pixel Perfect Part 2: An in-depth look into 360 video playback