360 video projection

A 360 video projection is any of many ways to map a spherical field of view to a flat image.

It is used to encode and deliver the effect of a spherical, 360-degree image to viewers such as needed for 360-degree videos and for virtual reality.

An equirectangular projection simply maps the yaw and pitch (longitude and latitude) of a sphere linearly to a rectangular image.

[1][2] In January 2018 the company started using the spherical projection to stream 360 degree videos on YouTube.

[9] The company claims an 80% reduction in bandwidth with this projection, with the disadvantage that many more viewports need to be rendered and stored.