Milk VR
| Milk VR | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| Type | 360-degree video service |
| Industry | Virtual reality |
| Developer | Samsung Electronics |
| Operating System | Android |
| Supported Devices | Samsung Gear VR, Samsung Galaxy phones |
| Release Date | December 30, 2014 (technical preview) |
| Website | (defunct) |
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Milk VR was a curated 360-degree video service operated by Samsung for the Samsung Gear VR headset. Samsung announced it on December 30, 2014 as a "technical preview" available to Gear VR owners, delivering full-motion 360-degree clips across categories such as music, sports, action, and lifestyle.[1][2]
The service was part of Samsung's "Milk" family of media brands, which also included Milk Music and Milk Video.[1] In June 2016 Samsung dropped the Milk name and rebranded the service as Samsung VR, opening it to user-uploaded 360-degree video.[3][4] Samsung shut the platform down in 2020, ending the Gear VR and headset apps by September 30, 2020 and deleting hosted accounts and videos.[5]
Background
Samsung introduced the Gear VR Innovator Edition for the United States on November 13, 2014, with the headset reaching the U.S. in early December 2014. The Gear VR was a smartphone-based headset that used a Samsung Galaxy phone as its display and processor, and its software was powered by Oculus.[6] Early Gear VR launch software emphasized passive viewing experiences such as Oculus Cinema and a Vevo music-video app, but it lacked a dedicated catalog of native 360-degree video.[6] Milk VR was Samsung's answer to that gap, providing a first-party destination for 360-degree footage shot for the headset.[1]
Content and distribution
At announcement, Milk VR was a free service exclusive to the Gear VR, with new clips added on a regular schedule of several days per week.[1][2] Videos could be downloaded at up to 4K by 2K resolution or streamed adaptively.[1] Samsung sourced footage from brands and media partners rather than the general public; named partners included Mountain Dew, the National Basketball Association, Red Bull, 20th Century Fox, and Skybound Entertainment.[2][7]
Samsung tied the service to its own 360-degree capture hardware. The company had publicly shown a multi-camera rig codenamed Project Beyond as a source of stitched 360 footage, and in 2016 it released the consumer Gear 360 camera in the United States for $349, which Samsung described as completing an end-to-end pipeline for shooting, uploading, and viewing 360-degree video.[1][3]
Standalone mobile app
On April 11, 2016, Samsung released a standalone Milk VR app on Google Play that played the service's 360-degree videos directly on a phone screen, without a Gear VR headset. The app used a "magic window" mode in which the viewer panned the phone to look around a clip, relying on the device's Gyroscope and Accelerometer.[7][8] The app could also download videos in advance so they were ready for offline viewing inside the headset. At launch the catalog held more than 700 titles, but the app would install only on recent Samsung phones, including the then-new Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, and not on Android phones from other manufacturers.[7][8]
Rename to Samsung VR
At VidCon in late June 2016, Samsung renamed Milk VR to Samsung VR and, for the first time, let individual users upload their own 360-degree videos to the platform rather than restricting uploads to brands and content partners.[3][4] Uploaded clips could be shared to Samsung VR as well as to Facebook and Twitter, and the service was reachable through the web at samsungvr.com in addition to the Gear VR and Galaxy devices.[3][4] Samsung paired the rebrand with the U.S. retail launch of the Gear 360 camera, positioning the camera and the service together as a way to capture and publish consumer 360-degree content.[3]
Shutdown
Samsung discontinued the Gear VR headset before 2020, and it wound down the associated video service that year. The platform that began as Milk VR had by then been split across the Samsung VR Video viewing apps and a Samsung XR service for uploads and premium content.[5] Around the middle of May 2020, Samsung stopped letting users upload 360-degree videos or buy premium content, and it set a timeline to disable accounts.[5] The Samsung VR Video app stopped working on the Oculus Go, Oculus Quest, and Oculus Rift on June 30, 2020, and on the Gear VR and the Windows Mixed Reality Samsung HMD Odyssey on September 30, 2020.[5] By the end of September 2020, Samsung said it would disable and remove all Samsung XR accounts and permanently delete account information along with published videos, so user-uploaded content hosted on the service was lost when it closed.[5]
Relevance to virtual reality
Milk VR was one of the first manufacturer-run 360-degree video stores tied to a consumer VR headset, arriving alongside the Gear VR at a point when most native VR content was games or short demos rather than filmed video.[1][6] Its free, regularly updated catalog gave early Gear VR owners a reason to keep using the headset beyond its initial novelty, and its brand partnerships (sports leagues, drinks brands, film studios) were an early test of advertiser- and studio-supplied immersive video.[2][7]
The service also showed the pattern, common in early mobile VR, of letting 360-degree clips degrade gracefully to flat phones. The 2016 standalone app's magic-window playback meant footage produced for the headset could also reach users who did not own a Gear VR, broadening the potential audience for the same content.[7][8] The rename to Samsung VR and the addition of user uploads, timed with the Gear 360 camera, reflected a wider 2016 industry push toward consumer-created 360-degree video rather than purely professional content.[3][4]
The shutdown is a frequently cited example of the risk that purchased or uploaded VR media can disappear when a vendor closes a hosted service. Because Samsung deleted accounts and published videos at the close, content that users had uploaded to the platform did not survive its retirement.[5]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 "Samsung Launches 'Milk VR' Service for Curated 360 Video on Gear VR". 2014-12-30. https://www.roadtovr.com/samsung-milk-vr-service-virtual-reality-video/.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Samsung launches Milk VR to bring immersive video content to the Gear VR". 2014-12-30. https://www.sammobile.com/2014/12/30/samsung-launches-milk-vr-to-bring-immersive-video-content-to-the-gear-vr.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 "Milk VR has been renamed Samsung VR and opened up to consumers". 2016-06-22. https://www.sammobile.com/2016/06/22/milk-vr-has-been-renamed-samsung-vr-and-opened-up-to-consumers/.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "Samsung's Milk VR drops the weird branding and becomes simply Samsung VR, opens up to individual user uploads". 2016-06-23. https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/06/23/samsungs-milk-vr-drops-the-weird-branding-and-becomes-simply-samsung-vr-opens-up-to-individual-user-uploads/.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 "Now that Gear VR is no longer available, Samsung XR service is being killed". 2020-05-15. https://www.sammobile.com/news/gear-vr-no-longer-available-samsung-xr-service-killed/.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "Samsung Introduces Gear VR Innovator Edition for the U.S. at Samsung Developer Conference". 2014-11-13. https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-introduces-gear-vr-innovator-edition-for-the-u-s-at-samsung-developer-conference.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 "Samsung Releases Milk VR App on Google Play, Makes Gear VR Headset Optional". 2016-04-12. https://variety.com/2016/digital/news/samsung-milk-vr-app-google-play-1201750973/.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 "Samsung's Milk VR app brings the virtual reality promise ever closer with full-motion video". 2016-04-13. https://www.pcworld.com/article/431027/samsungs-milk-vr-app-brings-the-virtual-reality-promise-ever-closer-with-full-motion-video.html.