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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Resolution vs Field Of View for VR

Yes, Dragon's Lair; It used a laserdisc to supply game graphics that were far beyond graphics capabilities of the CPUs at that time. I remember it lagged terribly as you progressed through the game, the seek and load times between the subsequent scenes pushed the systems to their limits.

VR is yet another approach for us to tell "our story"; Gamers have essentially been viewing VR movies for years, so we can take inspiration from there.

We still control the pacing of the scenes as we move the story along its timeline, so I do not feel there is an expectation for for the the viewer to interact with the story or characters, as it would become and interactive game at that point.

I feel that, much like 3D, VR allows us to immerse the viewer(s) more deeply into the the scenes that we create, and if done right, it can be adapted for both a single user wearing and oculus rift, or a group of people in a Barco Escape equipped theater.
 
OMNIMAX.
 
Yes, Omnimax would be the best, but it is difficult to retrofit into existing theater structures.

That being said, mini-dome projection solutions have existed for years, but right now everyone seems to be concentrating on goggles.
 
I went to the nearest OMNIMAX in Townsville nearly 30 years ago. It was treated more as a gimmick, with facetted dome. But the principle is good, and would he good in auto 3D. But VR movie makers should look at it as another venue, and maybe funding source for the few. I realise it has different intent than the directed focus VR filming described, but is that just an ego directors dream to cobtr the audience?

There was a personal gaming rig half vertical dome released years ago that I wouldn't mind getting. I have my own ideas.

Concerning Dragons Lair. I came up with a high speed, extremely, extremely (even nanosecond) low seek disc design years ago that could have been used with Laser Disc. Would have instantly transformed computer gaming, computing and video decades ago, if it had been invented at the time, because it could have been in those days. It wouldn't likely be nanosecond without one of my other inventions, but split second changes should have vern possible, even something more I still keep quiet on for other purposes. We have been held back and led by lesser minds. The greater minds have often been unacceptable and held back in history (not talking about artistic etc, which truly have a low practicality) from carrying forth their practical vision. Like the guy in the movie about cracking the enigma machine. Now, a bit strange I'll admit, but can you imagine if his potential had been guided to more practical advantage after the war. I've seen a picture of him in a fairy costume or something on a bike. There are so many areas in life that need a nice practically creative touch, like the android phone Im using, and the security issues with it (I'm about to send in another suggestion to Chrome and, this time, android teams, and see if it gets adopted again). But there are only upto several thousands of us alive in the world at any one time to go around, of high level. Imagine what a nation could do if those several thousand were in it. The UN should start a scheme up, to hire them to put forwards developments for the future. I wanted to start a local club for practically creative intelligence, but realised I would only really attract like several people to meetings at 1:10,000 ratios, below that the level might be tainted or mediocre. Even at 1:1000 you might find it hard to attract more than several people to meetings. Only enough for practically one work group (if you can get seven invested) not several seperate workgroups and working in consultancy. So, outside of capitals there is not enough people generally, locally. So a national organisation is really the alternative.

See in blinkered vision (most of us have it on some way) it is often, I feel, of latent inhibition, you think about something and your brain works out and draws conclusions quickly, this foreshortening your working out, and often people hover around the deadly lemmings of experience in such a short time. Literally, the mind stops working quickly, and you sit around dumb founded trying to work something out with a series of shallow thinking's. (It will vary as to how long you do it, how deep, how often you have your working out and "insights" and how fast. So literally, if you instantaneously conclude, for virtually every answer, it must be the standard answer according to what you learned from your experiences, you might be a bit of a bone head). In low latent inhibition, the mind keeps working and drawing more in. There are two conditions known for this, both can be used artistically, but Tourettes has more control over the process, the other, schizophrenics have less conventional control, and therefore the artistic bent over practical. Now, my father has aspergers I believe, very ordered, knowkedgable, inventive practically. My mother seemed to have some some dort of Tourettes symptoms. Aspergers is very categorising, detailing, knowledgising, and in itself limiting creatively. But put together with tourettes you have potential to creatively expand the Aspergers side, even in its own strengths. The rates of variance, in practically creative intelligence in the general population, I don't know, so I don't know how much percentage the general population contributes to the overall practically creative potential of the overall population. My guess from observation, is it might be low.

So, Laser Disc, as an example. It is pretty obviouse to look at it and say how can we store more on it. Then you go through methods that could he viable,. Fairly simple. But then you say, how can we do even more. You might make the leap, that even though the read spot size is x, it is read as A energy level over B time (skipped using y and z forobviouse reasons). Now, how do you take advantage of that. Now strength of signal is something that can be unreliable=errors, which for uncompressed video use is OK, but for inter compressed and computer data isn't, plus how to make a reliable signal strength recording on the disc material. Shaping is one way to alter the strength reliably, as long as you can get it to print reliably to the disc. So, possibility of achieving that. But overlapping data then extracting the spot from the overlapped data, possible, possible less errors, a bit more complex, and in laser disc day, possibly slower to process with reliability. But variable phase is more reliable, and simpler (and frankly, can be combined with variable signal intensity, and I forgot to put in, variable color, but at these sizes, frequency can be interfered with by the other mechanisms). So, late last decade inventions came out for variable phase and shaping (the rest I've been thinking about since the 90's for my own optical storage ideas) with DVD capacity of 100GB. Can we say, "Wow", for those days that was really good) and why isn't it applied to Bluray, and could have been applied through firmware update to some DVD players. Now, these days over 16 bits of phase data is being applied in memory circuit signalling, but in laser disc's day, say 8 bits could he possible (though 2-4 bits more likely). That would be 8x the capacity instantly, with more as phase signalling and spot size came down. So, today a Laser Disc could what, a few terabytes, single layer, and based on uv ray technology maybe 10's of terabytes. Now we are in 8k lossless territory. Now, add 16 bit phase shapping, and 3D recording. Now, estrapulate this across a 50cm-1M disc as a backup solution, with multiple layers or 3D depth recorded data (very diable). Funny how things work out. Some people might say, just enough is provided for us to reach our capacity. Like silicon is just enough head room for our present 8k mobile consumer compression standards (realising higher fps is coming) and some funky new silicon, like what I'm looking at, means pro high fps 8k 3D maybe possible.

People say, oh, it is easy, but how many people think like that in the average development process to push it forwards, not many (I'm not talking about stumbling here, I'm talking about rapid fire). It took a certain Korean (I think) person to come up with what was possible decades before hand, how come nobody else did it, a simple concept, if it was so obvious? Because, they simply don't, and equate things done to their simple thinking that may not really even include any working out, compared to people that can work it and it. People are not so good at working out new concepts, because there is often not much worked out before hand to work off of, requiring them to shape and work out all the answers, not to look at somebody else's shaping and conclude that is easy, but which they were not going to do themselves, even given the task. It to s like a man that designs a bridge like he has already seennthe design off, or a man that walks up to a new type of bridge, and in his pride, says that it is simple, and he could have done it like it was easy, but virtually NEVER really could, because he he lacked the talent to like that. There needs to be one of these practically creative people that can do the above all the time on each part of a project, on every development team on the planet. Maybe then technological development will proceed 10x faster and products be 10x times better, at half the development cost per unit if improvement, that is a paradigm shift, compared to the niave thinking used presently. If you want the richest company on the planet, hire them by the thousands to mix them into teams with competent member. We could have resch the stars thousands of years ago. It is only the conditions of latter Christianity that has enable us to progress this far, but our residing lack still holds us back.
 
Ok so I know this thread has been conpletely derailed (Thanks Wayne ; ) ) but to get back to my original question/research turns out there is actually a pretty perfect lens that is commercially available to experiment with hemispherical resolution using a single camera on the 8K Helium sensor.

Sigma make an APS-C sized circular fish eye lens for Canon EF mount https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/535757-USA/Sigma_486_101_4_5mm_f_2_8_EX_DC.html

This means on Helium you should capture the full 180 degree image circle at around 4K resolution, more than enough for todays home VR Headset resolutions.

Where it gets trick is delivery of live action video content into a CGI VR environment, especially in stereoscope.

An off the shelf development environment like Unity allows for video to be displayed as a texture in VR, but from reading the manual it doesn't have anyway to force each eye to render a different video texture (some clever programming may be able to get around this limitation) but it does mean that stereoscopic filming is out of the question for using video as an element in VR gaming today. (Given the prevalence of Unity as a platform and the low install base of headsets I am happy to eschew any experiments that require lengthy or bespoke development. Pragmatically I am looking for cost effective execution to experiment with, not what is theoretically possible.)

For Stereoscopic VR video only side by side or under/over delivery is possible and 4K video playback would mean that in over/under you may be able to get full resolution on the horizontal or at least half if a 360 composite of CGI and video is preferable which is promising in terms of emersion, there seems to be a number of stereoplayers that support head mounted stereoscopic VR for 360 so there is interesting options for narrative experimentation here that could also apply to stereoscopic dome projection experiences.

So my next question becomes this. Is there a cost effective way to setup two side by side Canon EF lenses to record on a single Epic Helium Camera?

Dual camera is obviously an option, but concievably two Sigma 4.5mm Fish Eye lenses would be able to fit two 180 degree circular views on one Helium sensor. You would just need a way to relay both images to project side by side but closer together on a parralel to their original plane.

So basically a single EF lens back end connected by two periscopes (left and right) to two EF lens mounts...

Seems feasible.
 
Just went back over posts, and except for the latter half of the last one it pretty much has been on vr after your questions were addressed. But the conversation did turn to the viability of the sort of VR. Sorry Craig.
 
I was mostly just ribbing you about the latter half of your last post Wayne, it was a sort of incredibly iconic divergence of the topic at hand that I knew I'd be in for discussing VR in off topic. No real harm done, my inital question is probably a bit too specific to be useful.
 
There have been some spilt field of view lens arrangements for stereo 3D with one camera but they were all targeted at HD video cameras I believe.
Still think if you are going to attempt VR with Helium go all the way and use 12 cameras (6 side by side in the 6 orientations of cube faces) for stereo view.
$$$
 
Mike Finegan said:
There have been some spilt field of view lens arrangements for stereo 3D with one camera but they were all targeted at HD video cameras I believe.
Still think if you are going to attempt VR with Helium go all the way and use 12 cameras (6 side by side in the 6 orientations of cube faces) for stereo view.
$$$
Click to expand...

Here's the thing Mike, such techniques are interesting but they are always going to be too unwieldy to be anything other than bespoke builds, and if it was simply a matter of getting a 360 stereo camera there are other commercially built options out there using small mass produced sensors for cell phone market or the incredibly expensive proposed Light Capture systems that frankly are either more practical and WAY cheaper (smaller stereoscopic 360 setups) or theoretically better and not significant orders of magnitude more expensive (proposed light capture technology).

I have no interest in pursuing anything that doesn't maximise results using the cheapest/most commercially available professional equipment - consumer gear (even Go Pro 360 type setups which straddle the border between professional and consumer) will invariably have quality issues that irk me, but high end bespoke rigs simply will be too expensive to provide as a service in anything but the largest most high end markets where the concept and specific budget will always lead the execution.

I want to find the sweet spot of cost effective but usable for VR narrative storytelling - a sort of Bolex of immersive VR cinema.
 
Mike Finegan said:
There have been some spilt field of view lens arrangements for stereo 3D with one camera but they were all targeted at HD video cameras I believe.
Still think if you are going to attempt VR with Helium go all the way and use 12 cameras (6 side by side in the 6 orientations of cube faces) for stereo view.
$$$
Click to expand...

Panasonic did a cheap split view 4/3rds 3D lens, the GH5 does 6k p30 photo. So there is a cheap system of higher resolution. Twin POV 4/3rds or less cameras are out there cheap (can not remember the name). There was an electro chromatic LCD 3D shutter technology, really cheap, goes on a normal lens system. Sony had an alternative 3D system in camera or if it was available to be attached, but am unsure if it was ever used on ultrahd cameras.

The LCD shutter thing has the advantage of not needing the setup of a twin lens system, which has to be set carefully for each shot to avoid visual integration issues. I should track this down myself. Problem is it would suffer from motion between the separate frame exposures. However, I imagine it might be a good compromise.
 
Craig Parkes said:
Here's the thing Mike, such techniques are interesting but they are always going to be too unwieldy to be anything other than bespoke builds, and if it was simply a matter of getting a 360 stereo camera there are other commercially built options out there using small mass produced sensors for cell phone market or the incredibly expensive proposed Light Capture systems that frankly are either more practical and WAY cheaper (smaller stereoscopic 360 setups) or theoretically better and not significant orders of magnitude more expensive (proposed light capture technology).

I have no interest in pursuing anything that doesn't maximise results using the cheapest/most commercially available professional equipment - consumer gear (even Go Pro 360 type setups which straddle the border between professional and consumer) will invariably have quality issues that irk me, but high end bespoke rigs simply will be too expensive to provide as a service in anything but the largest most high end markets where the concept and specific budget will always lead the execution.

I want to find the sweet spot of cost effective but usable for VR narrative storytelling - a sort of Bolex of immersive VR cinema.
Click to expand...

If only the manufacturer "light" was doing something. There are a number of cheap 360 from hundreds of dollars, from sports manufacturers, but not stereo 3D . Putting one beside the other, like in fisheyes, gets the other in.the way. So, what is needed, is one that has cameras placed so that it can construct 3D space from different stereo angles. An internal system for for fish eye migh by complex and expensive at this stage. I think I did come up with a microlens proposal, but I can't remember. I did have some sort of alternative design last year, but can't remember.

Anyway, the point, that some small mobile like sensors this year or so will start having big performance increases. So, the cheap setups might become more viable. At no film school, they had an article, or link, comparing the iPhone to a dragon, after some post. Not perfect, but things are likely getting better.
 
I forgot, Nvidia has a credit card sized drone board that accepts multiple surroumd camera input to process in 3D space. The car board has even more feeds, and native SHD support I think. So lots of development systems out there. I have a system with the previous full tx1 chip, and just ran 3D mark on it (though nothing much to do with your processing application), still.the fastest android device by far on it. The car platform.is double. A new chip is maybe coming with additional.improvements and 10nm or less.
 
I'm talking about equipment and actual technologies that can be used. If you want something else you have to use something else. Not very 'theotetical' in those respects.
 
That link is missing a lot of rigs. Various machine vision manufacturers have been doing surround rigs, even for many years. Computer Vision researchers use them too.

Re-edit: Sorry, I was wrong, they have the pointgrey cameras there. There are security cameras that those hanging mirror ones came from too.
 
Wayne a list of what is being used is more interesring to most shooters considering shooting for VR than what is technically possible.

Theoretically novel approaches are around every corner. But practically people don't invest their time or money on content creators who spend their time thinking up what works could theoretically be made with some around tge corner option. They spend mondy on those who shot sonething inspiring with what they had available yesterday.
 
Theoretical has a different meaning. MV cameras have been used in filming. A camera is a camera, a security cameras is a camera often with a standardised interface to hook into. Depends on what the list readers want to do, and how they want to do it, but it adds to the list. A number of items on the list would be less adequate than these.

Now, I've said nothing theorectical, but only practical usable things, I think.

I have yet to see a theorectical VR system around a corner here anyway, if I did it would be an actual system.

Bye.
 
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