Are you sick of living life in the first person? Do you sometimes wish your day-to-day activities could be viewed as an incredibly realistic RPG? Well, you’re in luck. With the help of Oculus Rift and a dual camera setup, mepi has just what you need to get started.
Camera drones and their accompanying photographic capabilities are consistently getting upgrades in hopes of pushing aerial photography and videography to, quite literally, new heights. The newest company seeking to introduce us to these heights is Parrot, who just yesterday announced their AR Drone 3.0, affectionately called Bebop.
With every report of virtual reality news, we seem to step closer and closer to a world such as the one depicted in Ernest Cline’s Science Fiction novel, Ready Player One. Today is no exception as we report on the new Sphericam 2: a 4K 360-degree video camera for transporting minds through the power of audio and video. The product, launched by Jeffery Martin, is on Kickstarter looking to meet its $150,000 goal, and it is almost there thanks to 130 generous backers thus far.
Getty Images has been known for its premium stock photography and video catalog. Now, with the birth of a major medium on the horizon, the company is looking to get into the virtual reality space. A new application, 360-Degree View by Getty, will give users a chance to experience their favorite moments as if they were there. Best of all, the application is available now on the Oculus Store.
It seems Lytro has a new formidable competitor in the area of light field cameras. Google revealed today that it has created a rotating arc of 16 GoPro cameras arranged vertically to experiment with light fields.
Virtual reality is an up and coming industry. Big jumps are being made, with many genres of photography and film getting on board. But VR has always been limited in its resolution, with the experience feeling a bit pixelated to the user. Finnish startup Varjo wants to change this with "human eye resolution."
Canon has built its own Oculus Rift app, giving users a virtual environment where they can go out and improve their composition skills while they try out some of the gear they've been lusting over.
Over 1.5 billion people worldwide use the Facebook app on a monthly basis, and all of those people have opted in to Facebook’s privacy policy by the act of creating an account.
The promise of truly immersive, virtual reality headsets for the masses is just around the corner with Oculus Rift launching its consumer version in 2016. In the meantime, a number of alternative solutions have been introduced including Google’s Cardboard, Samsung’s GearVR, and Carl Zeiss’ VR ONE headset. We’ll be taking a look at the latter to see if one of the world’s greatest optics manufacturers has what it takes to jump into the virtual reality space.
The August 17th issue of TIME magazine contains a cover story about the ongoing rise of virtual reality. Unfortunately for TIME, it's not the story itself that has everyone talking -- it's the cover photo.
Nokia has announced that they will be releasing ‘OZO’, the first commercially available virtual reality camera, later this year. The company says the device has been “designed and built for professional content creators, and [is] the first in a planned portfolio of digital media solutions.” The unit features eight synchronized global shutter sensors, eight integrated microphones for spatial audio, and a design reminiscent of the Star Wars training remote.
We spoke with the founder of Sphericam, Jeffrey Martin, on the future of the company’s 360-degree spherical camera lineup and where virtual reality imaging may be headed in the next decade. The Sphericam 2 has already surpassed its Kickstarter funding goal of $150,000, collecting over $400,000, with two days of the campaign remaining. Dive into this interview to learn what challenges the team faced and what they have around the corner.
Lytro’s research into the world of light field technology has produced two consumer devices. Their first camera was released in 2012 and introduced photographers to the concept of being able to refocus images after they had been taken. Then in 2014, Lytro released their flagship: the ILLUM. Armed with an integrated 30-250mm f/2.0 lens, a 40 megaray sensor, and upgraded software, Lytro was ready to show the world that their technology wasn’t just a gimmick.
When imaging company Kogeto created Dot -- a clever little system that gave the iPhone 4 360º panoramic video -- little did the general public know that this was merely a stepping stone towards what they really wanted to create. Three years later, they’ve finally let the panoramic cat out of the bag.
It’s called Joey, and it’s a professional-grade 360° 4K video capture device with a seemingly endless list uses.
Each year, hundreds of photojournalists put themselves in harm's way to offer us a glimpse into the horrors of war, and too many of them are going in unprepared, not knowing even rudimentary survival and first aid skills that could mean the difference between life and death when they're out in the field.
That's where the Oculus Rift virtual reality game "Stringer" hopes to intercede, providing rudimentary training for conflict journalists that may just help save their lives.
Throwable camera balls and their ilk might be all shiny and cool, but what if you want to grab high-quality 360-degree images with the camera you already have in your bag?
Enter Eye Mirror, a startup launched by U.K. inventors Dan Burton and Thomas Seidl, whose namesake product attaches to just about any camera and allows it to shoot 360-degree panoramas and videos.
DJI may be the dominant leader in camera drones right now, but there are plenty of other companies battling for a slice of the market. Parrot, which has a number of drones in its stable already, is showing off a new one at CES 2016.
The Parrot Disco is an ultra-light drone that can fly at up to 50MPH for up to 45 minutes with a 14-megapixel digital camera in its nose.