Bubbli for iOS lets you create amazing 360-degree photospheres
Bubbli is a new iPhone app that lets you create and share impressive 360-degree photospheres.
Android has included a Photosphere camera feature since Jelly Bean 4.2 was released last year, but iPhone users have been stuck with less-polished solutions like Microsoft’s Photosynth.
To get started with Bubbli, you’ll need a bit of guidance to learn how to hold the camera properly, but it’s fairly simple to figure out. By tilting the camera and pivoting in a circle around your phone, you’ll capture a bubble-shaped panorama of your surroundings. The free app uses a painting method to help you keep track of what you’ve recorded.
Don’t be too worried if your photosphere looks weird once you’re done recording, as Bubbli needs to send the photos to the cloud for stitching. It’s forgiving, but you’ll still need to move slowly and consistently when capturing. As an added bonus, you can also record the ambient sound to make your bubble even more immersive.
Here’s a quick photosphere I took at my local strip mall:
This was my first try, so it’s a bit rough. You can see some blurred out areas where I skipped spots, but the overall result was fairly seamless.
This post from Bubbli co-founder Terrence McArdle will give you a better sense of what the app is capable of:
Bubbli has been a few years in the making. The creators first debuted the technology at TED in 2011 shortly after closing a $2 million funding round led by August Capital. The startup has apparently been in stealth mode for so long that Crunchbase had marked Bubbli as closed. Thankfully, the team kept at it and the wait is now over.
Related: 10 simply breathtaking 360-degree Photo Spheres uploaded by the Google Views community
Image credit: Shutterstock / Captain Yeo
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