360-degree photos and videos are a different way of using Virtual Reality (VR) that is widely accessible to consumers today, both in terms of experiencing them as well as producing and publishing them. Viewing prerecorded images requires much less compute power than rendering full 3D scenes, and this works very well even on low-end mobile VR devices (such as Oculus Go) and mobile phone-based headsets such as Google Cardboard.

In this chapter, we will learn about using 360-degree media is Unity for VR projects. To begin, I will explain the difference between regular photos and spherical projections (equirectangular) and then demonstrate this in several cases, including crystal balls, globes, and inside-out magic orbs! Then, we'll create a new scene so that we can view 360-degree photos within VR and add a user interface to let the user switch between pictures. Likewise, we'll also learn how...