Slashdot Mirror
Technology for Capturing 360 Degree Video
Inzite writes "EnterNetica R&D is working on a new spherical video technology for capturing and presenting full 360 degree scenes using a 180 degree lens, by adaptively predicting the camera's surroundings. Video extrapolation techniques have been proposed in the past, but this is the first time I've heard of an entire hemisphere of the video image being "guessed". The article also talks about feature film presentation using fully-immersive video in the future."
Maybe I'm missing something, but the article doesn't explain why they don't simply place two cameras back to back, then use their software to splice the result and apply the correct perspective. All they say about it is that "it's against the laws of physics to take a 360 degree photo. That just seems odd.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...a 360 Degree TV to watch it!
Circumcision is child abuse.
Whilst the camera is looking the other way, someone could easily show in a message saying:
FIRST POST
but nobody would notice.
The site's already down, but based on the small blurb ... I don't see how this is possible. You're basically guessing at 50% of the scene, of which the only hints you have are land/sky textures.
If that's all this is about, I've been doing it for years in Photoshop. It's called the Clone/Healing Brush tool.
I used to think Linux was cool -- then I turned 14.
something tells me that something like this could usher in a new era of pr0n. 3d goggles and a vibrating chair, oh my!
/dev/random
Google Cache Link, Since the webserver is already dead:
w w.prweb.com/releases/2005/9/prweb288725.htm+site:h ttp://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/9/prweb288725.ht m&hl=en
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:zYFN61BG0lEJ:w
Here is google cache: thanks google.
I can't wait to see what movie theatres do with this technology. Maybe not our typical theatres, but yenno... like the one's at theme parks or something. I'm sure can make a pretty cool short movie with this.
The patent on Disney's Circlevision camera system has expired.
Google links on EnterNetica
(a) OPTICS ADVANCES BRING VOLUMETRIC VIDEO TO LIFE
(b) Pressbox link
(c) Cleaner, Crisper Volumetric Images
Company webpage
This way we can be INSIDE of a pr0n movie!
No frickin way!
Assuming that the slashdotted article also describes a 360 degree viewing screen, you'd be looking at the porn in front of you, getting all aroused, and then you'd look behind you and see the filming crew with the dodgy looking pron director and his clapper.
This would totally ruin the experience, IMO.
OT pondering instilled by TFA...
//OT
In Jack McDevitt's Hutch series of books, the passengers on intersolar flights passed thetime by "starring" in movies digitally redone with the passengers as the characters.
I was thinking about how hilarious this would be in real life, and how it could reinvigorate certain movies in theaters with minimal seating if they had decent hardware to sample random audience members (one person per group). I realized a fisheye lens can capture deptch with the right software.
Imagine how "cool" it would be to revisit Indy Jones or Star Wars or Usual Suspects where someone in your group was one of the actors? Even a bit part would lead to great inside jokes, and meeting up with new groups would be easy, too.
I'd spend $20/ticket for the social experience.
360 degree camera hack
pretty cool, simplistic yet inventive hack.
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
This would be pretty cool combined with the VirtuSphere.
Bradley Holt
...as a director.
I mean, part of the idea of a "film" is controlling the perspectives and what you present to your viewer. Somehow I have a hard time imagining this going past the art-house type movie, because the amount of work that the director has to do increases dramatically. Since you can't be sure what direction your audience is looking it, it would make it difficult to have a feature film in the sense that we're used to it...for example:
Jim: Wow, that guy just robbed a bank!
Sue: What guy? I was looking at those flowers over there.
[Camera whirls around, both get dizzy and throw up since they can't tell where to focus]
I'm being silly, but it just seems pretty difficult. That said, it's a cool technology, and if someone could tell me how they plan to deal with that whole focus issue in the context of a feature film, I'd be interested to hear it.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
There were teams using Amigas doing this years ago. I recall 2 such products: ProVu, and Cosmo. ProVu was used for "interior design." And Cosmo was used by cosmetic surgeons.
My ZooLoo
There is comparable software that might be of interest along these lines ... check out:/
http://www.pixtra.com/
http://www.ptgui.com/
http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
http://www.360dof.com/
http://www.arcsoft.com/products/panoramastitching
At Siggraph this year, there were two similar systems on display. They are unbelievably cool.
1) Point Gray's Ladybug2 has five cameras mounted in a box about the size of, say, a stack of three decks of cards.
2) Immersive Media's system has 11 (!) cameras in a sphere about 2 inches on a side.
Both systems do real-time stitching of the multiple images into a panorama.
We're looking into them for the obvious motion-picture visual effects applications. The resolution (both spatial and dynamic) is not ideal for motion-picture work, but the ability to have an extremely small, lightweight, panoramic capture is a tradeoff that is worthy of pursuit. In the past (say, on The Fast and The Furious) we used six ARRI 435 cameras mounted to the side of a motorcycle, to the tune of several thousand dollars a day rental, hundreds of pounds of weight, and fairly compromised images in other ways (bad lens flare, extremely bouncy images.)
Thad Beier
Hammerhead Productions
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
My local non-league football team (association football, that is... OK, soccer if you like) has a bloke who films every match using a camcorder, and produces DVDs for harcore fans (of which there can't be that many: 800 is a good home crowd).
I've not seen the DVDs in question, but it seems to me that producing adequate footage of a football game from a single vantage point, zooming and panning on the live action, must be quite a challenge.
It occurred to me that with a very high enough resolution CCD, and a very wide angle lens, one could capture the whole game using static cameras, and pan and zoom in post-production. With a few of these (which could run unattended) you could get very good coverage of a live event, deferring all decisions about zoom levels, pans etc. until afterwards.
What's that you say? Off topic? Er, OK. While a 360 degree capture might not be appropriate for a sporting event (unless you were also interested in capturing the crowd -- since the camera couldn't be in the middle of the pitch), you could use the same technique in other circumstances to capture an event then edit it down afterwards.
with the dodgy looking pron director and his clapper. So that's what you kids are calling it today.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Back in the 90s dot com boom I saw a prototype camera for doing 360 degree panning quicktime static images that was essentially a camera pointed vertically, with an extreme almost spheroid "fisheye" lens. The image would be processed to change the distorted fisheye image into a panoramic 360 degree view (The only direction you could not pan in was down, because the camera was there. Obvously down is the least interesting direction for panning, although I suppose you could have mounted the camera upside down if the ground was important.). The prototype seemed to work fine.
Why can you do the same thing with video? Is it because processing a "fisheye" image is just too processing intensive for 30 frame a second HD video? Is the technique patented and so off limits for other companies? Is it that a video image is too low-res to do translations from a distorted fisheye without blurring? Why do it the elaborate way described in the article when the fisheye technique seems a whole lot simpler?
I saw the prototype in person, so unless the company was commiting outright fraud, I am pretty sure the fisheye thing works.
Or you could, like, duct tape a bunch of cheaper camers into, like, a ball.
I have had an xray/picture taken that was exactly the opposite (I forget what it was, it was my orthodontist who had the equipment... This was probably sometime in the late 80s, so at the time it was probably super high-tech)... I sat in one place, and the camera spun around my head.
So what you are saying, while modded funny, is not too outlandish. You could have a camera spinning around on a motor, and if the frame rate of the video was faster than the motion blur, and it could spin around fast enough to capture enough frames per second, what you are saying would probably work. (Although I would prefer some solid-state technique than to be spinning a camera at 200 rpms).
360 degree views using a 180 degree lens are perfectly possible: you're just not looking at it right.
If you point the lens directly UP (or down even), then it will cover 360 degrees around you. You could extract a 360 panorama from that fish-eye image and remove the distortion fairly easily (although it would be processing intensive).
MadCow
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
They've alread produced 360 degree lenses, and mounts for analog and digital cameras. The math's already been done to change this convex lens structure back to a linear view; it's been around for almost ten years. They have numerous licensees, and so 180 degree lenses seem like a cripple.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
For it to be truly immersive, shouldn't they be bragging about 4 \pi steradians instead of 360 degrees? One's a measure of a spherical surface area and the other only describes a circle!
Also, why doesn't π or π give me \pi? It seems to work in general HTML... Interestingly enough, & still works (and a handful of others).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
You take a 180 degree fisheye lens, attach it to a camera, choose a virtual 180 degree line and rotate the assembly around that line. Then stitch the pictures together. You don't have to extrapolate nor do you lose any of the picture and have to "guess" as the article mentions. I am not sure what they are doing that seems "revolutionary", except maybe they have packaged the full unit and are showing it off. Either way, why are they having problems extrapolating to the hidden part behind the camera.
feature film presentation using fully-immersive video in the future
That will suck. First off, I can't really take in more than what's in front of me anyways. Am I going to have to twist around to see the characters and/or action? I remember a 360 movie in Disney world and it was more annoying than neat. Then there's the fact that part of the art of cinema is putting things in a frame -- if there is no longer a choice of what goes in and what doesn't, it's less and less of an art. Then there is the fact that by increasing the cost of filming, set design, distribution and projection, that these films will be even worse than what we are accustomed to.
I think there's a great untapped use for immersive technology, but feature films are not it.
Cheers.