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.

Comments

Not what you need for sports!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Not what you need for sports!

[dmbasso]

And here it goes: http://collegespun.com/acc/notre-dame/report-nbc-to-use-spectacular-freed-technology-for-notre-dames-shamrock-series-game

Much more interesting, IMHO.

Re:Not what you need for sports!

[lxs]

No what I really want is missing half the game because of commercials, endless repeats of missed goals, close-ups of players faces and/or third rate celebs in the stands. Think of the possibilities this system will bring to that!

Re:Not what you need for sports!

[durrr]

This would be great for porn

Re:Most armchair sports fans are too lazy to use i

[dmbasso]

You're forgetting that the broadcasters can use it to find the best viewing angle. The sports fans can continue to be lazy.

I've seen this demonstrated 15 years ago.

[XNormal]

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

Re:I've seen this demonstrated 15 years ago.

[Intropy]

Microsoft's Roundtable does this too. Those have been available for at least seven years.

Finally!!!

[DarthSmeg]

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"?

Re:Yeah, right...

[ctid]

I don't think the word "better" really applies, because not everyone is interested in the same thing. Some people want to see the game and nothing but the game. Other people want to look at the crowd. Others want to replay over and over controversial or exciting moments. Some people want to watch one player specifically, while others would prefer a much wider angle so as to be able to see the pattern of play developing. Some people like to see the facial expressions of the players.

It's not a competition and there is not one "best" way. If there is a choice of ten views of the game, there will be some people who like each and every one.