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| Immersive Media Puts You in the Picture |
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There are a number of new ways of viewing imagery that are gaining acceptance in the consumer sphere and with government agencies and technical service users. Some of these “views” are based on old ideas tried in the past, and others are truly new.
STEREOSCOPIC 3D
One old idea is 3D—the kind pioneered by the Saturday matinee monster movies in the 1950s. Such stereoscopic viewing has seen a revival lately. The NFL recently broadcast one regular season game in 3D as a limited experiment. The NASA channel used it to show views from the Martian Rover in 3D. And by the time you read this, DreamWorks’ first major 3D animated feature, “Monsters vs. Aliens” will be in theaters.
Typically, viewing stereo 3D requires some type of eyewear, either active shutter glasses for interlaced left-eye/right-eye fields or passive colored lens glasses used to view off-set red and blue fields. There are new displays coming to market that permit 3D viewing without glasses. But the limitation still exists that this type of 3D really isn’t 3D. You can’t actually look around a
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WAYNE COLE
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corner, for example.
360-VISION
A few years ago, the “surround camera” became the first viable way to record a 360-degree view. It was a circular installation of many still cameras and strobes or synched video cameras that captured overlapping yet slightly offset views around a subject. The effect first appeared in high-budget sports-drink commercials where the subject went into slow or stopped motion while the viewer traveled around her. It became a mandatory effect in every action flick or martial arts movie.
This “3D from the outside in” was novel and cool the first few times you saw it. But the camera installation was too cumbersome for practical use outside of Hollywood. The “inside out 3D” where the viewpoint is at the center of a visual environment feels much more natural. Early attempts to capture such “self-centric” views used gizmos like the Widelux turret camera with a rapidly sweeping lens that put a 150-degree horizontal field of view onto a single 35mm film frame. Other methods involved panning through an arc taking pictures at intervals on a calibrated tripod then “stitching” them together in the dark room, or more recently in the digital realm with software.
‘IMMERSIVE’ VIEWING
“Immersive” viewing places you, the viewer, are at the center of a recorded “visual environment.” And you, as the viewer, decide whether you want to look up, down, left, right, or do the full Exorcist 360- degree spinning head thing. Viewing uses common technologies such as Flash, QuickTime, Java or proprietary players from the 360-degree camera providers.
Immersive viewing has found a home in fields as diverse as teleconferencing, crime scene recording and “telescopic” surveillance. The 360-degree gear, like most other video recording equipment, runs the full gamut from affordable to quite expensive. At the lower end are lens attachments that place a convex parabolic mirror in front of the camera. With the camera pointed straight up, the mirror reflects a spherical view of the surroundings into the lens. The recorded imagery, processed for the player software, presents the viewer with a natural-looking 360-degree visual environment and interactive view direction control.
GET READY
It is quite likely that if you are in law-enforcement, homeland security, photo intelligence, video surveillance or geographic information services (GIS), you will be dealing with immersive imagery sooner rather than later. Handling that media is going to require high-speed, high-volume media storage. Even when compressed to “clips” or “pictures,” panoramic imagery can be massive, and require significant horsepower for smooth interactive viewing. So, before you “sign up” to handle this type of media, be sure your workstation is up to the task. You might also need to investigate the many panoramic “viewer” applications that will allow you to export imagery to Flash, QuickTime, or Java for your end users.
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