Wii U Panorama View Bird’s-Eye View

Genre: Application

Players: 1

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Review:

Wii U Panorama View Bird’s-Eye View, released on the Wii U in 2013, is a video Application that offers, for $2, a sort of virtual experience that uses the Wii U gamepad to put you on the underside of a glider aircraft in mid-flight. Or, to put it another way, Wii U Panorama View Bird’s-Eye View is a $2 glorified tech demo that is little more than a glorified five-minute 360-degree video. You know, the same sort you can access for free on YouTube and play on your phone or tablet?

This particular video has the viewer looking around at all angles during a flight, with the 360-degree camera attached to the underside of a wing of a small glider aircraft, and with light, forgettable music playing over everything so there are no noises from the video itself. Due to the camera placement, this means that you can not only view all around in 360-degrees, but also straight down. The only direction you can’t look is up… well, you can, but this is obstructed by the wing. During the flight, you’ll be joined by a flock of geese, and looking at a green countryside, farmlands, and then above a seaside near a city, which then transitions to riding on those waters in a boat (where you can now look straight up, but not down, as the area beneath you is blurred out). I should note that this is not a seamless journey, there are multiple cuts that sorta’ ruin the immersion.

Players are free to move around the Wii U gamepad, in 360 degrees, looking at everything around you and even the sky up and down where the camerawork allows for it. Players can use the right analog stick to zoom in, use the left stick to slightly tilt the camera in any direction, and can press L or R to instantly see 180 degrees behind you, like a rear-view camera in a racing game. And at any time, you can press + to pause the video, and fast-forward or rewind to any point.

As a tech demo for the Wii U, I suppose this makes sense – it demonstrates the Wii U gamepad’s screen and motion-sensing capabilities. However, charging money for this, even as little as $2, is absurd, and not only because you can get the same thing on YouTube for free, for countless videos no less. The other issue this has is that the screen resolution is embarrassingly bad, with some absolutely nasty artifacting going on in the video. What’s more, there seem to be focus problems in parts of the video, leading to double-images. The Wii U is an HD console! How could you have not gotten this right!?

I suppose, if you’re looking to add a tech demo to your Wii U library before the Wii U eShop closes… well, this is that. But unless you have some deep interest in the topic matter and cannot be bothered to look up 360-degree videos on YouTube, I see no reason to spend your money on this.

tl;dr – Wii U Panorama View Bird’s-Eye View is a 5-minute 360-degree video where the viewer looks around themselves from a camera attached to the underside of a glider aircraft, and then from on the bow of a boat. Even at $2, this feels like an absolute ripoff when you can get a similar experience on YouTube for free, and even if this wasn’t the case, the fact that the people who produced this video couldn’t be bothered to record it with anything even remotely resembling a decent image quality is outright insulting.

Grade: F

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