Google's New ATAP Movie Moves When You Move In A Virtual Vehicle

Just the latest in a series of "360 Google Spotlight Stories" is a vision called Pearl, released to YouTube in its entirety this morning. This video comes from Oscar award-winning director Patrick Osborne, known for his work on movies like Wreck It Ralph, Big Hero 6, Tangled, and Bolt. This video is by far the most complicated 360 video released by the group – but not the most jarring. This video can be viewed in full interactive 360 on Android or iOS.

This video is unlike any you've seen on YouTube ever before. It's not a static, flat sort of video. It's not even just spherical. It's interactive, too. Depending on which way your screen is pointing, you'll see something different, and the environment will react to your vision.

Osborne explained the structure of this movie this morning at Google I/O 2016: "If we set the entire structure of this film in a car, I could get my fill of these pretty compositions by making frames with these car windows themselves."

"We let the audience sit in the passenger seat, and treat it more like theater than film. I tried to spotlight the action and direct the attention of the audience, but it's completely OK if they wander, and I made sure the story would read no matter which direction they were looking – even if you're not looking the "right" way."

This isn't the first time such an interactive 360 video has been released, but it is the first time one has been released with such depth.

To view this story on YouTube with your Android device, simply tap the video to view it in the YouTube app. You'll see a 360-spherical interactive view with the embed above, as well, just so long as you're looking at it in Chrome.

If you have an iPhone or iPad, you'll want to head to the Apple app store to find the Google Spotlight Stories app. There you'll see full interactivity as well.

Have a peek at the making-of video for this production as well, above. There you'll find Google and the groups they worked with for this video at work.

If you're in search of the full collection of videos like this as produced by Google, head to the Google Spotlight Stories collection on YouTube. They're all fantastic!