There are many tantalizing possibilities around immersive technologies, but where they usually hit a snag is the fact that most cool experiences require complicated equipment. Stuff that you have to wear, setup, and ultimately think about.

So the holy grail for achieving a truly immersive experience is, of course, for it to just happen all around you – just like real life. There are many companies working on various visions of that Holodeck-like future, including Light Field Lab which we covered recently, but mostly they’re at an early conceptual stage.

Yet advances in existing projection technology have made it possible for new kinds of immersive movie theaters to be built, such as Space 360 in South Korea, opened last year.

There are many tantalizing possibilities around immersive technologies, but where they usually hit a snag is the fact that most cool experiences require complicated equipment.
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We wanted to make a true VR theater that would give visitors a breathtaking 360 immersive experience
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The setup inside this sphere, which is 12 meters in diameter, consists of a transparent glass observation bridge which spans the interior space, with high-resolution projection enveloping users above, below, and all around in 360 degrees, bypassing the need to wear VR headsets altogether.

The project was financed by Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. (the country’s national operator of power plants) which then proceeded to donate the entire thing to the National Science Museum as part of its corporate social responsibility program.

The holy grail for achieving a truly immersive experience is, of course, for it to just happen all around you
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The first show created exclusively for the sphere told the story of the Big Bang and the beginnings of human civilization, but it is capable of playing any fulldome or VR content.

Ukrainian creative studio Front Pictures was responsible for engineering and installing the projection system and software. They had extensive experience in engineering fulldome theaters and planetariums, having delivered over 150 such installations around the world. The concept of a fully immersive installation, however, was more challenging. For starters, placing the projectors in such a way that they would not shine directly in the viewer’s eyes was difficult.

“We wanted to make a true VR theater that would give visitors a breathtaking 360 immersive experience. But to meet our idea of the future, the system also needed to have the highest possible resolution and brightness of projection, high energy efficiency and cost effectiveness,” they recounted in a blog post on their website. “Unlike in a conventional digital planetarium, where projectors are located along the dome’s perimeter, the options for placing them in a full sphere are substantially limited. One of the challenges was to devise a layout that would avoid shadows being cast by the observation bridge, minimize openings for the projectors, while, at the same time, maximizing the resolution and brightness of the projection.”

In the end, they chose to use 12 projectors, located around two entrance doors, with their engineers exhaustively testing different layouts that would allow for rotation at extreme angles, as well as equipment configuration offered by various vendors (noise was also a big factor considering the number of projectors in an enclosed space.)

“The spherical screen creates significant geometrical distortions of the projected image. The distortions become even larger due to the fact that in a full projection sphere, it is impossible to place projectors along the perimeter, as a sphere has no edge. They need to be located around the entrance doors on the opposite sides of the sphere.”

A conventional fulldome experience is only half a sphere, so one can get away with deploying one fisheye lens. This is not enough to completely cover the spherical screen with a bridge in the center, however. In this situation, manual calibration – i.e. stitching the images together isn’t the best option, so they adopted an automated calibration system, based on powerful computer vision and image analysis algorithms combined with a 360 degree multiple camera rig. Front Pictures has been developing auto-calibration technology since 2012 which analyses patterns to seamlessly blend projectors together into a unified coordinated space.

Ukrainian creative studio Front Pictures was responsible for engineering and installing the projection system and software
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To overcome that, Front Pictures used four cameras with fisheye lenses mounted around the glass bridge, customizing their software to enable the multi-camera calibration. As they further explain:

“The previous generation of multi-projector systems were built around the “one computer per one projector” paradigm. But this approach has significant drawbacks such as a relatively big budget for computer hardware, more possible points of failure, difficulties with implementing proper failover solution, as well as higher electricity consumption. Another downside of the cluster systems is a discrepancy in video playback speed on different computers, which can result in rough, jerky video playback.”

They developed a technology called Screenberry to address that particular problem. This is a hybrid video processing engine which uses both the GPU and CPU in a much more efficient way and can smoothly playback 8x8K video on up to 72 output devices, all the while connected to just one computer.

The bar is set very high for immersive experiences that manage to capture our imagination and get punters actually paying to try them out
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It all highlights how incredibly difficult, laborious and time-consuming a process it is to get this stuff right. The bar is set very high for immersive experiences that manage to capture our imagination and get punters actually paying to try them out, and that sweet spot is mighty hard to hit. But the continued market growth shows that there is also an appetite for these experiences, it’s just a matter of finding the best way to deliver them. Whether or not that will involve any sort of wearable device in the future remains an open question.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Inside Space 360 – South Korea’s Amazing Fulldome Theater via @alicebonasio https://t.co/EOhLyUXnOS pic.twitter.com/0FkDf3kS2e

— VRScout (@VRScout) October 30, 2018

For companies looking to leverage Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR Tech Trends offers a comprehensive range of Virtual Reality Consultancy Services.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Diving Into VR Without a Headset appeared first on Tech Trends.

Filming in VR can be extremely challenging, even for established filmmakers. Many of the old rules and techniques of cinematography may need to be adapted; others no longer apply at all, and new techniques will inevitably emerge to explore what is in fact an entirely new storytelling medium.

Many traditional cinematography techniques don't apply to VR filmmaking
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JAUNT VR photo shoot in Palo Alto, Calif., Friday, April 3, 2015.
Photo by Alison Yin Photography

In order to help budding VR producers to overcome those issues and create high-quality content, Jaunt launched The Cinematic VR Field Guide: Best Practices for Shooting in 360° at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah last month.

Jaunt's guide aims to help budding VR filmmakers to master 360 video techniques
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The Palo Alto company – which was founded in 2013 and has offices in Los Angeles, London and Amsterdam as well as a presence in China – counts Axel Springer, The Walt Disney Company and Google Ventures amongst its investors. Its proprietary platform automates the transcoding and distribution of projects across devices and develops a host of hardware, software, tools, and applications for cinematic VR to produce original content for audiences worldwide. Jaunt also has a VR App that includes all content released to date and is available across a variety of platforms including iOS, Android, Gear VR, Google Daydream, PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive as well as desktop browsers.

Their 360° filming guide, which can be downloaded for free was developed by Jaunt’s executive producer Grant Anderson to support creatives in bringing their stories to life by providing them with a range of tips, tricks and lessons necessary for entering into VR filmmaking. Before coming to Jaunt, Anderson was executive director and stereoscopic supervisor at Sony Pictures, where he worked on creative uses of 3D.

“As VR, AR and mixed realities become more prevalent throughout mainstream cinematic entertainment, it is critical to ensure that the production teams behind these projects are equipped with the very latest and greatest guidelines to filmmaking in VR,” says Anderson.

As is appropriate for such a new and fast-evolving medium, the field guide is meant to be a “living document” which will be constantly updated to reflect the latest technologies and best industry practices.

“Virtual reality technology as well as the language of cinematic VR is constantly and rapidly changing at a breakneck pace, so we will endeavor to update this guide as new techniques present themselves, new technology develops, and we receive feedback from the community,” the guide reads.

“Jaunt will be regularly updating The Cinematic VR Field Guide as new VR technologies and techniques emerge including an upcoming section on post-production techniques,” Anderson adds.

The 68-page guide delves into crucial topics ranging from camera hardware and lenses to software, rendering and distribution. It lays out the technical basics from stitching to the production of spatial binaural audio. Some of the best practices areas addressed include:

Camera motion – Understanding proven practices for shooting high-quality, action-packed experiences without motion sickness-inducing separation between visuals and audio.

Directing the action – How does one direct the action when in VR there is no such thing as behind the camera? Everything in the scene – including the crew, lighting, vehicles, etc. – will be shot, so what techniques do producers need to use to get around that?

Lighting and exposure – Because VR filmmaking requires shooting in a full 360° there are some additional challenges involving contrast, flares, and lighting rigs.

The 68-page guide delves into crucial topics ranging from lenses to software, rendering and distribution
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As an Official Partner of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, Jaunt hosted daily screenings and content demos of 20 different VR experiences including award-winning VR content from RYOT, Lily Baldwin and Saschka Unseld, Conservation International and others. The company also hosted a series of panel discussions and workshops where they distributed the guide and showcased the company’s VR software and hardware to the festival audience, which this year embraced VR in a big way.

With VR maturing, the novelty factor of 360 video will start to wear thin with audiences
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With VR maturing rapidly over the past year, the novelty factor of 360 video has inevitably started to wear thin with audiences. There is a consensus emerging that content makers need to step up their game, moving away from gimmicks and producing consistent, high-quality content that will not only entice us to try those experiences, but keep us engaged with them for longer and make them truly memorable. In order to accomplish this, moves towards professionalizing and codifying of best practices are a positive step. To download the guide for free and give feedback on developing it further, go to the Jaunt website.

For companies looking to get into VR/AR/MR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance on how these technologies can enhance and support your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Jaunt Studios Releases Free Guide for Aspiring VR Filmmakers appeared first on Tech Trends.