By Evan Ackerman
Immersive Media is the company responsible for Street View on Google Maps. The above video experience is the same idea (a 360 degree panorama of imagery), except in seamless full motion video. You can pan and zoom in every direction besides straight down while the video plays, and enjoy 4 channel directional sound. There are a bunch more demos on the Immersive Media website, but I liked the Humpback video the best, because it’s as if you’re actually standing in the boat, looking around, trying to spot the whales.
The camera system is shaped like a dodecahedron, made up of 11 cameras and 4 mics. It records 2400×1200 pixels at 30 frames per second, and you can easily embed GPS data directly into the video, up to 3 hours of which is recorded onto hot-swappable HDs. The entire system weighs in at only 25 pounds, so it’s actually something you can walk around with. If you want to know how much it is, you’ll have to ask. Immersive Media is currently mounting their system on vehicles and doing Street View-ish tours in a few North American cities, perhaps in the hope that Google will get interested.
Personally, I’d like to see it combined with the VR portion of the HARV system that I wrote about today over on BotJunkie… Talk about an immersive experience!
[ Immersive Media ] VIA [ Ogle Earth ]
