I love all the experimentation in this area but I'm afraid systems like this are going to fall into a sort of uncanny valley of VR. Your brain is incredibly good at picking out the discrepancies between the real world and a high-resolution 120fps image with surround sound - just as it is incredibly good at recognizing objects and motions masquerading as human.<p>It's like going from 2D/24FPS to 3D/48FPS. You'd think it would be a huge increase in perceived realism but it's quite the opposite. What you want is magic window, which is what you get when a film or even a game really pulls you in and your perception sort of synchronizes with something completely out of step with your physiology and totally unbelievable for many other reasons. Instead, you get a feeling of unreality or surreality, and the final gap between the media and your perception is unbridgeable.<p>I think that's part of why VR/3D/HFR stuff has always been so unconvincing, and why it's no coincidence that it's finally only catching on when we pair it with totally unrealistic games and demos. You need the fantasy. Because it's so clearly not reality, and anything that attempts to replicate reality too closely will be rejected.<p>Anyway, cool tech though, and I'm sure I'll enjoy using it some day. But for now I think the foreseeable future of VR is in virtual environments, not in the duplication or capture of real ones.
Something that's maybe not clear from that page, but was mentioned in the Google IO keynote: this is not just stitching of multiple video streams.<p>Google does some heavy-duty machine learning / computer vision on their servers to extract 3D information from these video streams (they mentioned having depth data). Then they presumably re-generate seamless stereoscopic 360-degree video from this 3D model. That's how they can get stereo from mono data.<p>It's something like those hyperlapse videos from Microsoft, they also first do number crunching on lot of video data to generate 3D model and then use this to fill in missing data.
There are a couple of consumer ready 360 camera options available to purchase today ($300-$400), albeit not 3d steroscopic. I have personally played with the ricoh theta and the kodak pixpro and think they are good products. Here are some links if you want to check them out, I don't work for any of these companies but am a VR enthusiast...<p>Good for stills and video
<a href="https://theta360.com/en/about/theta/" rel="nofollow">https://theta360.com/en/about/theta/</a><p>Action camera similar to GoPro
<a href="http://kodakpixpro.com/Americas/cameras/activeCam/sp360.php" rel="nofollow">http://kodakpixpro.com/Americas/cameras/activeCam/sp360.php</a><p><a href="http://www.vsnmobil.com/products/v360" rel="nofollow">http://www.vsnmobil.com/products/v360</a>
Looking at the top comments - I guess I'm completely crazy. I 100% thought this was a late April's fools. They legitimately think people are going to buy a 3D printed (~$12 hat), that holds about $5k worth of gopros? So... this is like another Nexus Q/really smart guy's horrible idea that's just going to disappear with no explanation?
Looks great, though as other commenters have pointed out, 16 GoPros makes for an expensive rig.<p>I've been watching this space for a while and pretty much all of the consumer varieties (usually Kickstarter-backed) have pretty terrible video quality, so it looks like I'll be sitting this one out for a while yet.
The interesting aspect here is the iPhone availability for Cardboard and the use of Youtube as the platform for 3D VR.<p>Youtube already had stereoscopic support, but there were not many clients available, content was limited and difficult to create with 3rd party solutions that all cost money. It never took off and couldn't ride the wave of the studio and CE company driven 3D momentum, which quieted down after a while anyway.<p>This time Google ticks all the right boxes. Client devices on iOs and Android. The videoplayer everyone uses. A $5 cardboard enabler. A capture platform with GoPro and free assembly software.
16 GoPros? Sounds expensive. Certainly not something I would buy, since it would gather dust on the shelves along with my other gadgets after a few initial uses.<p>That being said, this may be the right time to reinvest in 360 degree stereoscopic video since the viewing technology is finally catching up. Point Grey has been making similar spherical cameras since the 90's [1]<p>Pretty cool idea overall. Other questions I had: Does it have a single data interface? How do you charge this behemoth.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.ptgrey.com/360-degree-spherical-camera-systems" rel="nofollow">http://www.ptgrey.com/360-degree-spherical-camera-systems</a>
Has anyone see the opposite of this done - where you have a 360 degree array of cameras pointed at a target? This would allow the viewer to pan around the point of interest during an action sequence.<p>I'd like to see an array of cameras using quadcopters flying around a target - say a whale jumping out of the water or a football player. This would allow the viewer to see all side of the action. Great for sports playbacks.
Wasn't this invented by Disney in the 50s? <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle-Vision_360%C2%B0" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle-Vision_360%C2%B0</a>
I'm curious how they are planning to record audio. Binaural sound can give a sense of presence even without video. The common approach to recording it is by placing microphones in your own or a fake heads ears and that won't work in VR. It'd be interesting to see an array of microphone elements perhaps in a cleverly shaped mold to go along with this.
I wonder if this is what gets VR to take off. Seems like Oculus will be way too expensive for practical use. Once people start getting content out there all you'll need is a $20 cardboard kit to take advantage of that.<p>You could have several of these say at a music festival hanging around and watch them from your house at your leisure without having to deal with heat and crowds. And worse you go see an artist on one stage and realize they're a dud and you have to now travel to another stage. With this, boom, you can switch in an instant.
I think LightField camera technology is ultimatly going to win the VR camera wars, it provides much better depth information. If you havn't seen the otoy tech yet it is worth checking out...<p><a href="http://home.otoy.com/otoy-demonstrates-first-ever-light-field-capture-for-vr/" rel="nofollow">http://home.otoy.com/otoy-demonstrates-first-ever-light-fiel...</a>
This is really exciting. I came up with the same design last year and have been really wanting to make a rig like this. My gym had treadmills with screens, and you could select a virtual hike through places like Oregon and New Zealand. So I really want to capture some of these hikes with this rig, and replay them while walking or running on an Omni [1]. I'm really excited about the potential for VR to turn exercise into an enjoyable experience, instead of a chore.<p>And one day I would love to travel around the world with a team and film a documentary like Samsara. [2]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1944625487/omni-move-naturally-in-your-favorite-game" rel="nofollow">https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1944625487/omni-move-na...</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0770802/" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0770802/</a>
The most realistic virtual reality I have ever participated in was the Duke immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE). There is a program that simulates a kitchen. There are cereal boxes, silverware, etc that you can pick up and even throw across the room. When I opened the refrigerator door, I instinctively moved my body out of the way. The crazy thing is that it's not even the best tech out there. The resolution was crappy and the physics were a little bit off. But if you stopped actively paying attention to the details, even for just a moment, it was enough to make some part of your brain think it's real. VR doesn't have to much better (if at all) in order to be really immersive.<p>If you're at Duke or somewhere nearby I highly recommend checking it out. They have visiting hours fairly frequently. <a href="http://virtualreality.duke.edu/" rel="nofollow">http://virtualreality.duke.edu/</a>
Did anyone else immediately think of this?<p><a href="http://digital--underground.tripod.com/id9.htm" rel="nofollow">http://digital--underground.tripod.com/id9.htm</a>
This is a really fun hack that really did make me smile and laugh... but I do wonder what the sensor/processing/display latency is like on hardware/software that wasn't originally designed to do this.<p>I once played with an early Oculus, it basically amounted to something that wasn't really succeeding at tricking my senses other than giving me a headache and making me want to vomit at the same time.<p>I'm sure similar things were said about early cinema though.
Looking at the picture immediately makes me think of it as an oversized crown or tiara you're supposed to wear on your head. Sort of a "Glass 3.0".<p>The "Camera Crown" is an entirely impractical idea of course (that is, not the actual idea), but that does lead me to wonder how it's meant to be moved through spaces, if at all.
wooow, multi-billion-dollar-megacorporation striped together 16 expensive cameras with a piece of plastic :OO<p>so what, actually. They find ways to continue maximizing profit from their commercial platform. Which was at its most-cool when it was community-mostly.
I had a book of chindogu from at least 10 years ago. They had an invention that looked shockingly like the jump camera. Here is an image which shows a scan of a few of the images including the relivent one: <a href="http://www.tofugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/chindogu-unuseless.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.tofugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/chindogu-un...</a><p>I find it kind of funny that Google is now using a system that was invented so long ago as a joke. Why not use any of the other system to capture 360 3d images? Why did Google decide 16 cameras was the right way to go?<p>The only reason I can think is you might get higher res images out of 16 cameras than with only a few and a hemispherical reflector or a motor, but is it really worth the extra cost and points of failure?
360Fly has a single 360 camera (shipping this year). Much more consumer friendly but similar concept. <a href="https://360fly.com/" rel="nofollow">https://360fly.com/</a>
Has anyone though through doing this with binocular vision in all directions? just thinking about the geometry, I can't thing of a way to do it without a truly egregious amount of sensors.
So, if you're at an event or something (like sxsw) do you wear this as a hat? or have a large pole... or how does filming with this actually work?
> Our 3D alignment approach creates a beautiful, seamless panorama, so you you won't see borders where cameras are spliced together.<p>Ironic how there's a seam in this sentence.