Jump – Experiences like you're actually there • Hacker News Board

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#51

Post by hallman76 » Thu, May 28, 2015, 7:56 PM UTC

Yhippa wrote: post #18

I wonder if this is what gets VR to take off. Seems like Oculus will be way too expensive for practical use. Once people start getting content out there all you'll need is a $20 cardboard kit to take advantage of that. You could have several of these say at a music festival hanging around and watch them from your house at your leisure without having to deal with heat and crowds. And worse you go see an artist on one…

This rig isn't the answer. Content creators are already using better rigs to experiment with creating immersive experiences.

Using Cardboard is disarmingly cool the first time you see it, but it's incredibly clunky and not immersive enough. And over time they literally fall apart.

The Samsung Gear VR is a much more likely candidate to drive mass adoption. It's higher quality than both the cardboard and the Oculus. If you already have a Samsung phone it's a small investment to get a great VR experience.

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#52

Post by Kiro » Thu, May 28, 2015, 7:57 PM UTC

devindotcom wrote: post #22

I love all the experimentation in this area but I'm afraid systems like this are going to fall into a sort of uncanny valley of VR. Your brain is incredibly good at picking out the discrepancies between the real world and a high-resolution 120fps image with surround sound - just as it is incredibly good at recognizing objects and motions masquerading as human. It's like going from 2D/24FPS to 3D/48FPS. You'd think it…

You sound like someone who hasn't tried Oculus Rift. In that case I'm happy to inform you that you're wrong.

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#53

Post by TheGRS » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:00 PM UTC

seanherron wrote: post #49

Wasn't this invented by Disney in the 50s? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle-Vision_360%C2%B0

I was just thinking about how the idea has been around a long time. Even back in the early 2000s I was working on a project that used a camera on a special tripod that would let you take pictures in 360 degrees and stitch them together with some software in post (quicktime I think?).

But I think the neat thing is using readily-available GoPro cameras and stitching the video together quickly. That takes a lot of processing power to do on the fly.

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#54

Post by DINKDINK » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:00 PM UTC

georgemcbay wrote: post #16

SunShiranui wrote: post #5

How does it do stereoscopy?

There is definitely overlap in the FOV of the cameras that are adjacent to each other (GoPros in 16:9 generally have about a 120 degree field of view, though specifics depend upon which GoPro models is being used), so I assume they timesync the individual videos and use that overlap information to determine relative depths of things.

In order to do Stereoscopy properly, you need the axes of the camera barrel to intersect having a set of cameras all radially pointed outward doesn't achieve this.

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#55

Post by fixermark » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:00 PM UTC

soggypretzels wrote: post #24

I had a book of chindogu from at least 10 years ago. They had an invention that looked shockingly like the jump camera. Here is an image which shows a scan of a few of the images including the relivent one: http://www.tofugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/chindogu-un... I find it kind of funny that Google is now using a system that was invented so long ago as a joke. Why not use any of the other system to capture 360…

It's not for capturing 3D images.

It's for capturing 3D movies, which can then be stitched together and viewed immersively. There's similar technology used in "Circle 360" theaters in Disneyworld (EPCOT) and other places, but the cost has generally been in the content-production side of things.

Cost is still in the content-production side, but by basing it on commercial off-the-shelf components, they're bringing it closer to the masses.

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#56

Post by javert » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:03 PM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #11

javert wrote: post #2

Almost impossible to read that font on my machine. edit: I'm on Linux/Firefox. I assume it has to do with what font sets I have installed.

If you're going to make that kind of complaint, you really should at least mention what you're using to view the page.

I agree. Edited my comment.

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#57

Post by imaginenore » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:03 PM UTC

teraflop wrote: post #43

citruspi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gopro's cost is about the same I guess The GoPro Hero4 costs $400.

But the GoPro Hero is only $130 and is physically the same size.

The first GoPro is garbage. I have one, and I have the 3+ one. The first one is noisy, has horrible compression, absolutely horrible at low light, doesn't shoot 4K, doesn't do 60fps at 1080p.

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#58

Post by Arjuna » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:11 PM UTC

devindotcom wrote: post #22

I love all the experimentation in this area but I'm afraid systems like this are going to fall into a sort of uncanny valley of VR. Your brain is incredibly good at picking out the discrepancies between the real world and a high-resolution 120fps image with surround sound - just as it is incredibly good at recognizing objects and motions masquerading as human. It's like going from 2D/24FPS to 3D/48FPS. You'd think it…

You might be interested in this talk that Michael Abrash gave about 2 months ago at Facebook F8 [1]. It starts at around 00:42:20.

It is a fascinating talk where he provides a number of interesting demonstrations regarding how the brain interprets information, including depth perception, color interpretation, movement, auditory cues [2] etc. Highly recommended.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDu-cnXI8E8&t=2540

[2] Absolutely fascinating. What you hear depends on what you are looking at, not just on what you are hearing. This demonstration starts at approximately 01:02:00 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDu-cnXI8E8&t=3720

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#59

Post by fixermark » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:12 PM UTC

peter303 wrote: post #46

Yhippa wrote: post #18

I wonder if this is what gets VR to take off. Seems like Oculus will be way too expensive for practical use. Once people start getting content out there all you'll need is a $20 cardboard kit to take advantage of that. You could have several of these say at a music festival hanging around and watch them from your house at your leisure without having to deal with heat and crowds. And worse you go see an artist on one…

VR has been "around the corner" for 30 years. At some point Moore's law will give enough resolution and speed that images will seem real. I thought Oculus had reached that point, but I havent seen a demo yet. Wait a little longer and off the shelf solutions approach that point too.

The big risk to the 3D / VR market is generally the possibility that there is a percentage of the population that just isn't "wired" for it, i.e. they can't actually experience immersive 3D without physical revulsion from their sensory experiences not lining up.

When you start designing a product for only N% of possible consumers, you're in trouble if N isn't large enough.

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#60

Post by bd » Thu, May 28, 2015, 8:13 PM UTC

Something that's maybe not clear from that page, but was mentioned in the Google IO keynote: this is not just stitching of multiple video streams.

Google does some heavy-duty machine learning / computer vision on their servers to extract 3D information from these video streams (they mentioned having depth data). Then they presumably re-generate seamless stereoscopic 360-degree video from this 3D model. That's how they can get stereo from mono data.

It's something like those hyperlapse videos from Microsoft, they also first do number crunching on lot of video data to generate 3D model and then use this to fill in missing data.