Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 199 posts

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#151

Post by jkaunisv1 »

xrjn wrote: post #109
netcan wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well put and fascinating points. I;m not entirely sure if this is adding to or disagreeing with the points you make… A few weeks ago I commented on some thread about robot maids and such. My point was and is that when we picture a far off idea that we suspect is coming (AI, VR, human-less hotel-resorts) we need mental placeholders where people go now. Technology tends to replace people in the way reddit replaces libr…

> A few weeks ago I commented on some thread about robot maids and such. My point was and is that when we picture a far off idea that we suspect is coming (AI, VR, human-less hotel-resorts) we need mental placeholders where people go now. Technology tends to replace people in the way reddit replaces librarians but we can’t picture reddit in advance until the world wide web or something similar exists. So, flying cars…

VR has already taken off. It's not everyday mainstream yet, but it is well on its way.

I do like that way of looking at future technology, but I think we're close enough to VR "happening" that we don't need that sort of thought experiment.

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#152

Post by sebastianavina »

waynecochran wrote: post #77
bd wrote: post #60

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 the…

Yes. I wrote the code for the http://www.3d-4u.com 3D camera. You definitely can not use simple still image stitching algorithms. Per pixel depth estimation (via dense stereo matching) and subsequent blending must be used. I would say more, but I had to sign a long NDA before I worked on this.

i was expecting the cube to get solved once the page finished loading.. I'm dissapointer

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#153

Post by bigiain »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #125
jrowley wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because simply stitching it will create one image/video stream from one perspective. If you have 2 eyes, you have stereo vision so can perceive depth. This technique allows for the synthesis of stereo video from a rig that doesn't directly capture stereo video. Pretty cool stuff

The point the GP was making was that you can treat each pair of cameras as a pair of 'eyes' for the stereoscopic analysis. And you get every combination of adjacent cameras as a pair so a ring of 8 cameras represents 8 distinct pairs (call them camera 'a' and camera 'a' + 1 clockwise) By processing those streams you should be able to derive high quality depth information from the combined video streams, and given the…

I don't know specs of the HERO4, but the GoPro HERO3 has a 170 degree view angle - so that 16 camera rig has a _significant_ overlap. I suspect you could generate both "adjacent camera" and "every second camera" stereoscopic pairs without too much difficulty, and you can probably even extract useable data out of the "every third camera" pairs and their ~30 degree view overlap. My guess is everything seen by that rig is viewed by 3 distinct pairs (a&a+1, a&a+3, and a&a+3), and that the entire scene from a 16 camera 170fov rig could be considered to have 16 a&a+1 pairs, 16 a&a+2 pairs and 16 a&a+3 pairs giving you three stereo views with different baselines for every point in the scene. I'm guessing there's a _lot_ of spatial information in there.

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#154

Post by jkaunisv1 »

tunesmith wrote: post #45
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…

I actually loved 3D/48FPS - I felt like I was watching a play in a large diorama. I've regularly wondered if different theaters tuned it differently, or if people's brains just have differences, since so many other people reported 48FPS as looking fake.

What killed 48FPS for me was how obvious it made the transitions between heavily CG/post-corrected scenes and fairly unedited ones. The overall color tones and movements weren't consistent. To me the Hobbit 2 was visually half film, half video-game.

I could see a movie with no CG (or careful use of it) being very enjoyable in 48FPS.

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#155

Post by bigiain »

aggie wrote: post #127
wanderingstan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't claim this to be a consumer product. As others have said, the cost of this is peanuts compared to professional cameras. I'd bet one of the first killer-apps for VR will be sports: Imagine several of these rigs set up around (and over) a football field, so that spectators can choose to "be" at the right point on the field to observe the game, and have complete freedom to look around the field.

I think you'd be surprised how nice it is to have a team of producers and camera operators doing the work of finding the interesting views for you. People attend live sports for the atmosphere and shared experience, not the view.

That's true - but for my preferred sport (motorcycle racing) sometimes it'd be _really_ nice to not have to "settle" for the producers choices of what to see (that last MotoGP race had, from memory, 3 critical overtaking manoeuvres happen while the producer had decided to cut away to showing the team/girlfriend in the pit garage). We don't have the bandwidth (yet), but I dream of the day when there's a cluster of camera arrays (similar to that 16 GoPro rig) at every on track vantage point (the current camera locations would be fine to start with), with a few hundred video streams coming out of the race track and the option to use whatever smart software you can buy/subscribe-to/write, or even maybe get a curated feed from someone other than the on-track producer. The World Superbike Championship telecast is already using some pretty good image processing software to paint real-time telemtery overlays onto a bike in the video feed - it's still making mistakes, but it's pretty impressively good considering it's happening honest-to-god-live. (I can't find any public videos to link to there, sorry - Dorna are obviously really good about sending takedown notices to Youtube, and all the good video on their own site is behind their paywall...)

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#156

Post by pitchups »

nightpool wrote: post #88
nhaehnle wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since people might not be familiar with the term yet, I feel it's useful to point out that it's spelled "presence" with a 'c', as in, you feel as if you were actually present in a virtual reality.

Haha I was reading the parent and I was like "Pre-sense?" "What would that have to do with feeling immersed in VR?" This cleared it up, thanks.

Heh, and for a moment there I thought Pre-Sense was some Google Tech - similar to Adsense - for monetizing 3D VR :)

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#158

Post by bigiain »

bigiain wrote: post #153
ChuckMcM wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point the GP was making was that you can treat each pair of cameras as a pair of 'eyes' for the stereoscopic analysis. And you get every combination of adjacent cameras as a pair so a ring of 8 cameras represents 8 distinct pairs (call them camera 'a' and camera 'a' + 1 clockwise) By processing those streams you should be able to derive high quality depth information from the combined video streams, and given the…

I don't know specs of the HERO4, but the GoPro HERO3 has a 170 degree view angle - so that 16 camera rig has a _significant_ overlap. I suspect you could generate both "adjacent camera" and "every second camera" stereoscopic pairs without too much difficulty, and you can probably even extract useable data out of the "every third camera" pairs and their ~30 degree view overlap. My guess is everything seen by that rig…

Actually, I just realised all those HERO4's are mounted in portrait orientation, so they won't be getting 170 degrees of horizontal view, and you probably aren't going to get useful overlap between the a&a+3 camera pairs. (but it does mean there's only two 20 degree wide conical polar "blindspots")

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#159

Post by jonahx »

polymathist wrote: post #140

The most realistic virtual reality I have ever participated in was the Duke immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE). There is a program that simulates a kitchen. There are cereal boxes, silverware, etc that you can pick up and even throw across the room. When I opened the refrigerator door, I instinctively moved my body out of the way. The crazy thing is that it's not even the best tech out there. The resolution was cra…

How did it compare to Oculus Rift? I've never experienced either but I'm curious....

Re: Jump – Experiences like you're actually there

#160

Post by tw04 »

Looking at the top comments - I guess I'm completely crazy. I 100% thought this was a late April's fools. They legitimately think people are going to buy a 3D printed (~$12 hat), that holds about $5k worth of gopros? So... this is like another Nexus Q/really smart guy's horrible idea that's just going to disappear with no explanation?
Post reply on HN