A plain-English explanation of equirectangular projection, stitching, and how your headset turns a flat video into a sphere.
360° video looks like magic, but the underlying format is simpler than it seems.
Equirectangular projection: nearly all 360° video is stored as a flat rectangular frame, usually at a 2:1 aspect ratio (e.g. 3840x1920). This flat image is a distorted map of a full sphere, similar to how a world map distorts the round Earth onto a flat rectangle.
Stitching: multi-lens 360° cameras capture several overlapping views simultaneously, then software 'stitches' them together into one seamless equirectangular frame, blending the seams so they're invisible during playback.
Playback: your video player or headset takes that flat equirectangular frame and wraps it back onto a virtual sphere in real time, then renders only the portion facing your current view direction — which is why dragging or turning your head reveals a different part of the scene.
Stereoscopic 3D: for depth perception, some 360° video is captured in stereo — two slightly offset views for left and right eyes, packed either top/bottom or side/side in the same frame, tagged with suffixes like _3dpv or _3dph so players can split them correctly.
Understanding this makes it easier to troubleshoot playback issues (wrong file tagging is the most common cause of a 360° video appearing 'flat' or doubled) and to appreciate why higher source resolution matters so much for a sharp final image.
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