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Lytro Announces World's First Light Field VR Camera

Posted by timothy on from the you-are-there dept.

An anonymous reader writes: VR is easy for video games, but hard for live action: you don't know where the viewer will be in the virtual world, so you can't put the camera in the right place in the real world. Light field cameras are perfect for VR though, because they're essentially holographic, and capture lots of positions at once. And Lytro has announced the first system that's both 'light field' and 'holographic', which changes everything. Wired seems similarly excited.

30 comments

  1. I am happy otter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Yiff Yiff!!

  2. They're essentially by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Slashdotted

    1. Re:They're essentially by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "It's dead Jim"

  3. Which changes everything. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Could we please stop with this fucking hyperbole? It changes pretty much nothing.

  4. It's the yearly Lytro post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's the yearly Lytro post! Welcome back!

    http://slashdot.org/?fhfilter=lytro

    Let me know when they're disposably cheap, will ya?

    1. Re:It's the yearly Lytro post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The first generation is now $150.

    2. Re:It's the yearly Lytro post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nobody uses disposable camera's. Why would you demand Lytro brings out a disposable camera instead of one with digital memory?

    3. Re:It's the yearly Lytro post! by JazzLad · · Score: 1

      Refurb is $50-60; I bought one a little while back (kinda regret it, but it's a neat concept).

      --
      "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
    4. Re:It's the yearly Lytro post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I bought one off of groupon fro around $70 I think. Fun to play with but not going to give up my Canon 5d MkIII for it :)

  5. Cool gadget, but pricey by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

    Okay, I'll be happy to admit I think this is a pretty cool camera with some interesting features.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  6. Light field re-defined by Technician · · Score: 1

    This appears to be a new meaning from the old established Light Field used in microscopes. Light field is the normal microscope view. Normal is often referred to bright field. Dark field is a special illumination technique.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Wikipedia article

    --
    The truth shall set you free!
    1. Re:Light field re-defined by Tx · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not so new.

      "Michael Faraday was the first to propose (in an 1846 lecture entitled "Thoughts on Ray Vibrations") that light should be interpreted as a field, much like the magnetic fields on which he had been working for several years. The phrase light field was coined by Alexander Gershun in a classic paper on the radiometric properties of light in three-dimensional space (1936)."

      wikipedia

      --
      Oh no... it's the future.
    2. Re:Light field re-defined by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A light field microscope is not a normal microscope. It has to do with how the imaging system works. Bright field vs dark field is the difference from how you light the sample and has nothing to do with the imaging system. So you've confused light field with bright field. No one else has redefined anything.

  7. Anybody own a light field camera? by BenJeremy · · Score: 1

    I was tempted by a sale on BoingBoing's store a while back - $79 for one of these types of cameras. Anybody here on Slashdot ever try one out?

    1. Re:Anybody own a light field camera? by khr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've got the first generation Lytro. It was a nifty toy for a while, but ultimately I wasn't happy with the quality of most of the pictures. Except for in bright sunlight they were all pretty grainy and dark. The changing of the focus is neat on some where something is very close and others are very far, but if everything is middle distance to far, it's not interesting.

      It was very hard to come up with good lightfield images that matched the demo ones on their website.

      Maybe I should take it out again, take a break from walking around with my SLR for a weekend or two, see what I get.

    2. Re:Anybody own a light field camera? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've got the first Lytro, and then I got an Illum. They are really interesting, and learning to use them effectively has improved my conventional photography composition. I get the impression there aren't too many around as people ask me about. Them. The Illum needs some serious grunt in the computer that processes the images. The depth of field.refocussing that you can do in the images is really interesting. I'd recommend any serious photographer to have a go on one, probably the Illum now the price has dropped. I hope. Lytro can make a go of things. The Illum is a fantastically sophisticated device.

  8. It's a race by Solandri · · Score: 2

    10 years ago I thought light field sensors were the future of photography. But in that 10 years, processors (especially GPUs) and camera sensors have advanced so quickly. It's now a race between light field sensors (which are like recording the information a hologram records), versus simply mounting 2+ cameras which take pictures simultaneously and using image processing algorithms to extract the depth info from those pictures instead of recording it directly.

    1. Re:It's a race by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They're not necessarily mutually exclusive. Light fields open up the door to all manner of processing trickery to extract more information out of them, since there's still significant tradeoffs between spatial resolution and viewing angle.

    2. Re:It's a race by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dual light field sensors? Who ever heard of such a ridiculous thing? You are ridiculous.

  9. All their gadgets are useless toys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Both versions of their previous camera are terrible. Differing degrees of terrible. Image quality is so bad its nothing more than a silly (expensive) gadget. You can pick up the original ones, new unopened stock, for practically free now for a good reason.

    1. Re:All their gadgets are useless toys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Technology always gets better. Always. At the same as computers.

    2. Re:All their gadgets are useless toys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope.

      Technology has become more proprietary over the years; that's a major setback.

  10. marketing BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "It changes everything..." meh, bullshit detector maxed out already

  11. Does it even exist yet? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    because they're essentially holographic

    Judging by the images on the article, this one's also entirely CGI.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  12. HOLY FUCKING SHIT! IT'S...ANOTHER LYTRO !!! by simplypeachy · · Score: 0

    What the Christ!
    * Dense light field
    * Ultra high bandwidth direct-to-disk capture
    * WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T WHY A CAMERA NEEDS ITS OWN SERVER AND EDITOR AND PLAYER SIT THE FUCK DOWN PANTY-SNIFFER
    * IT NEEDS ULTRA HIGH BANDWIDTH DIRECT-TO-DISK CAPTURE now if you'll need me I'll be outside getting all the bitches because I have a LYTRO IMMERGE

    1. Re:HOLY FUCKING SHIT! IT'S...ANOTHER LYTRO !!! by apk+got+an+account · · Score: 1

      You need meds even more than I do ...

      --
      Mod me up if you want me to take my meds!
    2. Re:HOLY FUCKING SHIT! IT'S...ANOTHER LYTRO !!! by simplypeachy · · Score: 1

      You must have missed a particular review of the original Lytro!
      http://lewiscollard.com/camera...

  13. Coren22, impersonating me now? Please... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Everyone here KNOWS I don't use registered 'luser' accounts & funny how your 1st post came where I smoked Coren22 http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    * How damn transparent could you be Coren22?

    Guess doing AC "impersonations" of me here to KGIII wasn't cutting it for you eh? Especially when he said he KNEW it wasn't me http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    THIS ONLY TELLS ME I AM MAKING HEADWAY AGAINST YOU WITH SUCH CHILDISH "RETALIATION", lol...

    APK

    P.S.=> I noticed you logged back on (after logging off from approximately 2:45pm today & then logged back in around the time of this post - how "coincidental" (not, it's obvious))... apk

  14. better approach? by Thagg · · Score: 1

    I would think that an array of more normal cameras (say, 16 or so) with a LIDAR scanner would be a better approach. Far more efficient, and the 3D info from the LIDAR should enable you to make good VR imagery.

    --
    I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
  15. Lytro, the feature that still thinks it's a produc by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lytro, the feature that still thinks it's a product. Are they still killing themselves by refusing to license to established manufacturers? If so, lotsa luck on living that dream of replacing Canon or Nikon because of your feature... that you think is a product.