Virtual reality likely won’t become part of our regular media diet anytime soon, but the technology behind it is changing fast. Both the production process and the photographic technology supporting it continue to make impressive innovations, showing that the immersive new medium may eventually find a place outside the gaming world.
From virtual reality video editing to creating narratives fit for virtual storytelling, there is a great deal of complexity behind producing virtual reality content. Perhaps the greatest barrier, though, is the hardware it requires. Lytro, a camera maker known for its innovative technology, recently announced a new virtual reality camera system that may allow the industry to move to a new level of video quality–assuming studios will be able to afford it.
Lytro’s new camera system, known as Immerge, is significant because of its novel approach to recording video for virtual reality. Historically, virtual reality video has been captured by picking a focal point, say at the center of a room, and recording several different perspectives from that point (i.e. in front, behind, above, below, etc.) and stitching those images together to form a coherent, 360-degree image. On the other hand, the Lytro Immerge records a single 360-degree image all at once.
It goes further than that though. Thanks to its eye-catching design, it essentially records five different 360-degree images and stitches those together, creating a virtual reality with depth and mobility. Lytro calls this the “light-field volume.”
To get a sense of the perspective the Lytro Immerge offers, picture yourself standing in the middle of a room. You can look in every different direction, while also moving about a foot in any direction to get a slightly new vantage point. That’s more or less the perspective provided by Immerge.
In a nutshell, you can alter your viewpoint in six different ways. Lytro calls this the “six degrees of freedom.” Here’s a video of it in action.
Lytro’s Six Degrees of Freedom:
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Move left or right
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Look up or down
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Move up or down
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Look left or right
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Move forward or backwards
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Tilt head side to side
As the video above indicates, the Immerge hopes to bring high-definition, cinema-quality VR footage to the market. But as you might guess, capturing cinema-quality footage in such an immersive way produces a humongous amount of data. Because of this, each Immerge camera will be paired with its own data storage unit, a stack of servers, to store the footage. Each server will be able to hold about an hour of Immerge video.
Immerge is designed to be an end-to-end system, meaning it will do more than just shoot and record video. It hopes to address all aspects of video production. Part of this concerns how Immerge will work in action. Since the camera will capture everything around it, the camera operator and production crew can’t exactly right by it to work the controls. Because of this, Immerge can be controlled remotely from a smartphone or tablet. Integration with existing video editors, a playback device and a streaming server also fit into the Immerge’s end-to-end system.
It should go without saying that this won’t be a mass-produced product for the average consumer. Even when it eventually sells as an individual unit in 2016, it will carry a six-figure sticker price. For a more feasible option, production companies will be able to rent it out for a few thousands per day.
Still, the innovative design should make Immerge a highly desired piece of equipment. It contrasts sharply with existing technology, such as the GoPro Odyssey or Google Jump, both of which will stitch together footage from a 16-GoPro mount to form a coherent virtual reality. Here’s an impressive display of GoPro Odyssey’s quality, although pointing the camera upward makes its limitations clear. Stitching together 16 different cameras makes their centerpoint heavily blurred.
And how does Immerge match up? Well, we don’t exactly know yet. Neither the Google Jump nor the Lytro Immerge will be released before next year. And while the technology GoPro and Google utilize is fairly straightforward, the “six degrees of freedom” Lytro hopes to create is still incredibly new, which means it has yet to prove that itself in the field.
Applications
So far, most of the virtual reality we’ve encountered has been computer generated. This allows video game makers to create a world where players can move around and explore. Now, the Immerge promises users the ability to move around within live-action footage–the real world, not a computer-generated one.
Some imagine broad applications for live-action virtual reality, from apartment showings to touring new car lots. While this may prove feasible for some of the more rudimentary VR cameras, it’s hard to imagine Immerge making sense for a car dealership or a real estate company giving its huge price tag. Indeed, Lytro intends for Immerge to be used by cinematic and video game producers for top-quality content.
And while most of our experiences with virtual reality in Hollywood have been limited to VR videos showing off virtual reality technology, the Hollywood Reporter points to growing production efforts geared toward narrative-based virtual reality ventures. It’s an exciting new technology backed by huge companies making enormous investments. Only time will tell how Lytro and the virtual reality industry will make its way into our everyday entertainment.
