360 Panoramic Video Capture And Recording: Immersive, Fully Navigable Video Is Here

You have probably seen several times in the past, those immersive digital photographs in which you can easily look up and down and turn your vision all around in full 360° glory. The 360° panoramic new year's eve of 2003 in Times Square, New York, has been one of my first memorable favorites, as it captures so well the thousands of emotions and different people celebrating on the street at once.

But video technology is now surpassing even these spectacular capabilities, by delivering navigable 3D, immersive video which as good or better than the 360° navigable images you and I have seen until now.

Check this video out. Once it starts rolling, click and move your mouse in different directions. You will be surprised to see that you can now fully navigate also inside moving video images.

The visual impact is really quite shocking, especially if, this is the very first time you are in front of a 3D, immersive and fully navigable video.

This spectacular feat is achieved by utilizing eleven video streams arranged according in a geodesic fashion. By doing so it is possible to capture an almost complete spherical image; a high-resolution 360 degree view of surroundings that is seamlessly stitched together.

 

 

Immersive navigable 3D movies can integrate GIS coordinates and other metadata to create highly informative, educational or life-saving emergency and assistance video guides.

The company behind this impressive new media technology is Immersive Media Corp., based in Calgary, Canada. The company also owns the wholly-owned subsidiary Immersive Media Company, based in Portland, Oregon.

 

Among the fish inside the coral reef

Immersive Video Capture Thanks to a Dodecahedron Design

The dodecahedron, with its twelve symmetrical pentagonal facets, is the most natural geometric division of a sphere for immersive image capture. It offers symmetrical, standardized divisions of the sphere that make the most of the image produced by each lens, and produces even resolution in every direction, better blending of the images, and more even illumination of the overall scene.

Perfectly equal and parallel faces, edges and corner angles, and divisions according to the Golden Ratio: A/B=(A+B)/A

It is the most natural geometric division of a sphere for immersive video image capture. It produces:

The enormous number of pixels recorded enables the highest image quality in every direction. The result is consistent image resolution across the entire spherical frame, with photographic realism and full motion.

Over 100 million pixels per second are recorded, resulting in spherical frames of 2400x1200 pixels, 30 frames per second. With the Telemmersion System, software is not required to correct sub-standard image resolution.

Images may be viewed spherically using the IMViewer software for looking around, or in an overall panoramic sphere movie format utilizing standard video playback platforms such as Windows Media® Player or QuickTime®.

On 42nd Avenue - New York

Helicopter Flight

Want to see more?

The Immersive Video Viewers

IMC has designed different viewers to meet your requirements as there are several ways to experience immersive video both during and after capture. To understand how the various viewers can assist your projects in either a live or recorded format and also bring your creations to desktops worldwide over the Web, please click on the viewers below.

Viewers: Live / On the Fly

• ImmersiViewer Card - realtime, blended view


• Multi Image - "On the fly", angle by angle perspective


• Worldview Card - Live, surroundings at a glance

Immersive Media - Viewers Types

• IMViewer - 360 degree movie, putting you in control of what you want to see


• GIS Viewer - georeferenced, immersive movie


• Webstreaming - use the web for video playback

More Info

Have more questions?

Wonder how much space this technology needs to record it all?

Check out the FAQ page in which you get detailed info on most of these issues.

Immersive Media blog

Dancing with the humpback whales

Photo credit: Ophelia Cherry

Native Dancers in New Guinea

On this video, the immersive video camera was taken to the Alotau Canoe Festival, a native celebration involving song, dance and canoes. The video puts you right there among the dancers, in the water, or on a replica of an ancient Polynesian outrigger.

For more info: http://www.immersivemedia.com/