I can't tell if it's the headband to slip a phone into, the tools for content creation, or the dual channel cameras. Perhaps it's all three.
kind of a shame they used up the 180 name though. it's not a wide view of vr. it's not really a 180 from the cardboard either.
From the few words about it, i have a generally positive vibe about whatever vaguely defined thing they made. Neat. Not neat enough for me act on. I'm probably not in the targeted demographic. But good luck with whatever that winds up being.
I recently got a Gear 360 (affordable 360 camera from Samsung) and it's easy to see why Google would focus on 180 instead: the quality of the image is seriously weak in 360 and cannot be much better in 180 due to the device having only one camera facing either way, there is no way to preview photos without the phone, and a lot of the time (concerts, sports hyperlapse, landscape shots) you only want the front view anyway. That being said, I still like the idea of 360 for being able to capture the full scope of a place (like a studio apartment I shall soon move out of) easily - though maybe Google's could just do panorama easily.
You can capture (in my opinion) better experiences of static scenes with Cardboard Camera (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.vr....). It's higher resolution than most 360 cameras I think and comes with depth (!!) and sound. It's been a while since I used it though and I think it might have holes in the top (it's not a full sphere).
Managing what happens in front of a camera is hard enough when you're making a video using a single fixed position camera on a static set. Making a video where everything in a 180 degree arc around the camera has to be choreographed is going to be a lot more work. I wonder if Google (or a third party) have any ideas how to make that part of the film-making experience better.
It's not 6-dof. This playlist[1] shows VR 180, and the videos are stereoscopic videos with a wide (180ish degree) field of view, but no 6-dof. I don't know if that might change in the future.
There's limited 6-DoF from Google's Jump camera (https://vr.google.com/jump/): "Assembled videos are high resolution and come with depth data, ready to go for edits and visual effects."
Maybe I'm old, but didn't it used to be customary to include some text actually describing the product on a product introduction website? Like so many other such sites, this has a signup link and a flashy-yet-uninformative video. It might as well be advertising Jabberwocky.
I mean, it looks like they're adding stereo video to youtube (didn't it already have that?) that you can view on your Cardboard or Daydream headset (couldn't you already?) so... it's a rebranding of that? The only 'new' thing is that they're partnering with a couple of hardware companies to make stereo cameras exactly like someone (Samsung?) was selling five years ago.
(Edit: Except that the example VR180 youtube video seem to have been shot at 5-10fps for some reason - is that just me or is this part of the charm?)
Wait, there's a new HTML5 version? What's next, a new version of that stupid web game where you click on the soccer ball to stop it hitting the ground and it counts the clicks?
(If there is one of those, please tell me now or not at all, and especially not Monday morning when I have documentation to write. :P )
It's a shame there's so little info on this page. There are several articles about this from various tech news sites[1][2] (there are a bunch more, but I'm not gonna link to all of them).
One of the general ideas of this "VR 180" format is that it gives you a lot of the immersion of 360 video, but it's a lot easier for creators to use (you can still put all your equipment (lighting, sound, etc.) behind the camera and not worry about it being in the shot). The cameras capture 180(ish) degrees of view. When played on the web or iOS or Android, it will play/look like a normal video (with maybe a bit of a wide lense). But if you use a headset, then you can look around a little more and get the "VR immersion" experience.
Disclaimer: I work at YouTube and did some of the iOS work for this. I do not represent my employer in any way, and this post is just a personal note of mine.
But what's the product? Is it that headmount thing they slide the phone into? Or is that Daydream? The cameras seem to be a separate thing arriving later, so it's not those. Or is it just the idea of trying to build a standard for 180 degree videos as opposed to static or 360?
I'm often quite surprised that a massive company with such competent staff can overlook detail on a public announcement site. Surely the very first bit should be a statement about what's on offer?
That "headmount thing they slide the phone into" is actually a Daydream[1], I'm pretty sure.
The VR 180 "product" (that you can purchase) is, as far as I know, the cameras that are in development. However, there are a few other things that the VR 180 announcement covers:
- Ingest support for VR 180 to YouTube's servers. The servers can now ingest, process, and serve VR 180 videos.
- Player support for VR 180. YouTube clients now know how to handle (and play) 180-degree content.
In the past you could just take a 360 equirectangular video and chop it in half and call it 180. But you couldn't upload it to YouTube and play it back, since it would try wrapping it to 360 still, and it would look wrong. So this announcement covers a few things: server support, client support, and new dedicated cameras for 180-degree content.
(Edit: my comment about about the lack of content is now outdated, since the URL for this submission has now been changed to the Google blog post. The original URL was https://vr.google.com/vr180/)
Half the bandwidth to serve, creators can have their lighting and equipment out-of-frame, and no one looks over there anyway. Win, win, and meh, which adds up to win.
kind of a shame they used up the 180 name though. it's not a wide view of vr. it's not really a 180 from the cardboard either.
From the few words about it, i have a generally positive vibe about whatever vaguely defined thing they made. Neat. Not neat enough for me act on. I'm probably not in the targeted demographic. But good luck with whatever that winds up being.