On March 13, 2015, YouTube began supporting 360-degree video uploads. A normal video tells the viewer where to look. A 360-degree video records a much wider field and lets the viewer decide whether to face the stage, the crowd, the sky, or the ground.
On Android, viewers could move a phone or tablet to change the angle while the video played. On the web, they could drag the viewpoint with a mouse in Chrome. The screen was still flat, but the act of watching became more physical and exploratory.
YouTube imagined several uses for the format: concerts where the audience could turn toward the crowd, wingsuit flights where the sky and ground competed for attention, and interactive stories where looking in a different direction revealed a different part of the scene.
The cameras were not yet ordinary household tools. YouTube worked with companies such as Bublcam, Giroptic, Kodak, and RICOH THETA, and the upload process required special metadata. A script had to mark the file correctly so the player knew it was spherical.
That early friction is part of the story. 360-degree video was not just a higher resolution; it changed the grammar of a shot. Instead of asking a filmmaker to point at one detail, the format asked the creator to build a world and trust the viewer to explore it.