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OmniCam360 Camera Cluster Lets You Choose the Viewing Angle
Zothecula writes "Armchair sports lovers are at the mercy of TV directors who chose what camera angle is shown when. Most sports fans will have been frustrated with their shot selection at one time or another, but a new panoramic camera would put such decisions in the viewer's hands. Comprising ten individual cameras, the OmniCam 360 provides a full 360-degree of the action." Just don't roll it down a hill and try to watch the results.
You don't usually want a choice of directions to look from a fixed point - you usually want to be able to look towards one or two interesting bits of play from a different location.
That's the FIRST thing to do!!!!
Is it 3D, too?
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Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
I met the CEO of a small French company whose product blew me away, so forget the bulky Omnicam!
http://www.gizmag.com/geonaute-action-camera-360-degree-ces/25747/
Just don't roll it down a hill and try to watch the results.
Is there an example of this somewhere?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They just sit back and are happy with what's given to them. Who has used the multi-camera option on a dvd ?And are there any dvd's that even used that feature ? Same idea here.
You're forgetting that the broadcasters can use it to find the best viewing angle. The sports fans can continue to be lazy.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
The only time that I have seen multi-angle support on a DVD and Blurays for animated, alternate language titles, or in one case the art boards instead of the live scene.
Thirty four characters live here.
The application was a video conferencing system. The omnidirectional camera had the exact same arrangement of mirrors and black baffles between them. It was placed in the middle of a conference table and the display was steered automatically by a microphone array that determined the direction of the speaker. This way you always got a nice framing of the speaker's head. It was essential for getting any kind of usable picture in a conference with multiple people back when bandwidth was limited and video compression was crappy. It would still be very useful today but I haven't seen this anywhere.
http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?FT=D&CC=WO&NR=9847291A3
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Does this mean I can finally get to see what is just outside the frame when they show the naked actress from neck-up or with something conveniently positioned just in front of the "important bits"?
Tarald - The Lord of Smeg
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on
99 out of 100 sports fans will screw up. The guys who scan 10 feeds and pick the best one will do better almost every singly time. That's why they get picked out of a couple of thousand wannabe's to do the job.
Mostly, they're better than Joe Sixpack though that isn't a tune that plays well in a country that believes everybody's opinion is just as good as everybody else's.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I'm fairly sure TV coverage deliberately sabotages viewing angles to maximize the draw of live attendance. TV screens have increased, resolution continues to increase, yet views of action are no wider than when the picture on over-the-air coverage could barely be distinguishable from snow. Take hockey on US TV for example. The way the coverage is presented, the action is essentially random. Shots are never wide enough to see long passes or the maneuvering of either the recipients of the passes or the defense to impede them. The same goes for soccer. Soccer coverage is particularly disassociated from the target audience because that audience increasingly is interested in the game for the beauty of the passing not the infrequent scoring. I see all over the area common people who are kicking around soccer balls never to shoot the ball but merely for the sheer joy of passing.
Oh yes, I know...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_RoundTable
I've got a couple of these things at the office. It works okay I guess. It detects where the sound is coming from and angles the view in that direction.
I need a camera with \[ 4\pi\mbox{steradian} \] solid angle viewing
... like half of the other articles on Slashdot.
http://www.gizmag.com/omnicam360-panoramic-camera-fraunhofer/28639/
i had this idea years ago
It's more likely that this device would help broadcasters than viewers. They'd throw one of these cameras up on a cable above a stadium, running it back and forth and it would be the director who chose the most interesting angle from the 10 offered.
> Most sports fans will have been frustrated with...shot
> selection at one time or another, but a new panoramic
> camera would put such decisions in the viewer’s hands
ensuring frustration with shot selection most of the time.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Looking forward to OmniCam360 pr0n...
There are a few different categories of sports fans. The armchair sports fans who catch a few games while drinking a beer on the weekend are indeed not a likely target audience for this. But there are also more 'hardcore' sports fans who keep track of reams of statistics, want replays from as many angles as possible, are willing to pay for $200+ subscriptions that let them frame-by-frame step through past games, etc. There's probably a market for premium services for that segment.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It's for sports.
Yeah, and for those not watching alone this is going to drive everyone else totally crazy. You're watching the action, when the doofus with the remote decides he wants to see what's happening on the sideline.
I predict a new wave of TV related domestic violence.
Do those persons know we live in a 3D world?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
But there are also more 'hardcore' sports fans who keep track of reams of statistics, want replays from as many angles as possible, are willing to pay for $200+ subscriptions [nfl.com] that let them frame-by-frame step through past games, etc. There's probably a market for premium services for that segment.
Yeah, they're called morons. It's grown men playing with a ball, FFS. Who else could care that much about it?
In other words, anime. Even in that case, the difference between angles is pretty much limited to the title card and credits.
Much better to be a grown man playing video games.
It's highly trained athletes at the top of their game competing to excel.
You don't have to like it but if you criticise it because you don't understand why people like it, you end up looking stupid.
Broadcasters won't want it for that because (a) they get to plan their perspectives in advance, and (b) they need to choose their lens perspectives which this can't do. Furthermore, this would require replacement of a great deal of expensive equipment that likely provides better quality and would result in the same or even more work in post. Broadcast teams have figured out how to do the job already, they won't want the "help".
This exact type of setup has been used for years in Microsoft's RoundTable video conferencing device, including automatic selection of the speaker. I'm not sure how this really qualifies as news.
So Baseball has this technology in real life, but Riot can't rotate the purple side 180 degrees in LoL?
... where incompetence will serve as well.
And in this case, that may even be a bit harsh. Filming these things perfectly is not exactly easy.
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There's a Metallica DVD that uses the angle feature on a couple songs, you can choose which band member to watch instead of the director making the call.
The big reason this will never hit my TV screen is that the teams don't want us to understand what really went on during the plays. This technology may get used, and may become available to the teams who played in the game, but the teams will actively block access to the general public. There are already many cameras on the field that give easier-to-understand views than we see on TV, and we never see footage from those, either.
On a side note, I've been around long enough to realize that the editors can't keep track of what was posted yesterday (let alone two years ago), but somehow I was still surprised to notice that today's article and the one I linked were both posted by Timothy. Oh, well, stay classy, Tim.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Oh you have it all wrong, we know exactly why people like it. That's precisely why we think it's pretty much pointless.
Mutli-camera interactive viewing is facilitated by Mamigo GameView product branded "Strive"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WkEA0SUykk
http://www.youtube.com/user/MamigoGameView?feature=watch
It is deployed in colleges on the East Coast providing a low cost broadcasting solution as well. The cool change in perspective isn't commecialized yet. The users are the broadcasters right now. There are capabilities that allow end user to achieve interactivity at different levels but these aren't yet available commercially.
I think interactive viewing that is social may be the way games are watched in future.
i like you content.
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