We all agree that augmented reality and virtual reality hold enormous educational potential, and the only thing we need (besides making both "realities" more accessible) is good content. The BBC has taken a solid step in that direction with a video produced in 360 degrees where we see in digital action a titanosaur, the largest dinosaur discovered to date.
Visiting ruins, traversing deserts, and exploring museums in other countries... the Web and virtual reality allow us to do all that, but the truth is we barely scratch the surface. Anyone can see a painting on a wall, but imagine a digital simulation of the original artist creating it in his time, facing all the technical and social challenges that limited him. Artificial intelligence and machine learning combined with virtual reality can lead to extraordinary things, like the latest video presented by the BBC. The most important difference is that its content focuses not on art, but on paleontology. Dinosaurs, to be more precise.
The video, developed by the BBC's Natural History Unit and the agency 'Hello Charlie', shows Sir David Attenborough alongside a titanosaur, discovered in Argentine Patagonia three years ago, which apparently surpasses in size and weight another giant of the region, the Argentinosaurus huinculensis. 70 tons (equivalent to about 14 or 15 African elephants), 40 meters long, and a heart capable of pumping 90 liters of blood with a single beat define the grandeur of such a creature.
Being published on YouTube, the controls are exactly identical to those we have observed in other videos, and the same applies to its limitations. Our recommendation here is to play the video at the highest possible resolution (1080p60 would be ideal), as the loss of quality in 360-degree videos is very evident at lower resolutions. I imagine that the number of videos with these characteristics will increase even more in the future, and they will inevitably reach other fields. What would you like to see in 360 degrees?
