FREE VR GOGGLES!

Coming to England any time soon?

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http://www.freevrgoggles.com

Samsung S5 and progress:

A progress report:

I got fed up waiting for a cheap handset to arrive from China, so bought an S5, which is perfectly adequate for testing etc.

I've since compiled a scene using two of Gokcen's models (a friend of mine who's a super-fast games modeller) and some sound based on a demo cardboard scene from google.

I know how to bake indirect lighting effects to lightmaps (which helps enormously) and am looking into how to get pre-rendered lit textures etc onto geometry.

Everything seems to be working fine, today I'm looking into:

How to create teleports and to create alternates to the single-click magnet/switch trigger input, including incorporating code to:

• Trigger down
• Trigger up
• Trigger click
• Boolean if the trigger is held
• Seconds trigger held for

I'd like to make a cube-room, with a couple of doors and teleport options to move between them, with something that demos some of those 'hooks' (?) I've bulleted.
Things I've learned:
Most VR content, especially videos are generally well filmed (ie from a company called Jaunt) but GOD their stories are crap and uninspired, and so far, for filmed work the sound has been mono.
Which is insane: There are no cues to turn to where I hear a door open or footsteps etc. In Unity it's super easy to create world-space sound (that sticks to things in the scene) so I don't know why they failed so badly in the films I've seen. ADR and Foley artists required?
I think my friend Jason would really enjoy creating 3D soundscapes and atmospheric effects.
I've not seen any cardboard that uses much more than 'sit and wait for things to happen to you' or a point-click or constantly-moving mode, so maybe other types of click don't work well - but I think they could.

Ozo: A 'Pro' VR camera rig from Nokia

Interesting thing here from Nokia.

The review was viewing unstitched video.
It seems odd that they'd give demos on Oculus and Vive without spending the money to get their footage looking absolutely awesome...

http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/28/9064499/nokia-vr-camera-ozo

Unity, Android, Windows and Erks*

Firstly: I'm not a developer.

Secondly: I've never used an Android

Thirdly: When I used Unity at work for some augmented reality iPad app for Land Rover, I had my hand-held by the in-house developer.

Fourthly: I'm now learning words like SDK. That Android devices are often different, and that the app needs to accommodate to lots of variants of things.

Phones need USB drivers and to be set into 'Dev mode' via a fun coundown that starts 'You're only 3 taps away from being a developer!' ...

I've got hold of a Galaxy S5, which is perfectly fine for what I want to do: Currently it's 'Load anything I've compiled in Unity'

.... I'm waiting for the Android SDK to load.

*Erks are the noises I'm making.

On the plus-side, I've got a keg of Purity Ubu under my desk.

Light Field cameras for VR

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/02/nextvr-light-field/

Light-field cameras for VR will become a thing soon. This will be yet another game-changer.

I wish I had more money to spend on kit....

Oh Hai there >>>

http://stargatemedia.no/

Yes. I will get in touch with you soon ...

Polariod cube: Tiny 124' wide angle sports cam

Here's an interesting thing:

http://www.polaroid.com/cube

 

Fyuse

Something a bit like bullet-time, on your phone. Interesting.

I'm guessing it's a movie tied to accelerometer / gyroscopic data, scrubbing back and fourth as you twist your handset.

https://fyu.se/

Ricoh 360' content competition!

http://contest.theta360.com/index-en.html

Maybe a slide-show tale... could use cardboard.

Brushless stabilser - possibly for Ricoh Theta M15

I'm looking at 360' filming with a Richo Theta M15, stabilsed to reduce viewer nausea. 

Feiyu FY-G3 Ultra

Here's an excellent unboxing video of the camera, with a goPro mount.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDwRUkjSPZU

Here's his blog on the device, having used it a bit:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2184744

Here's a motorcyclist's video on how to attach it to a helmet using goPro mounts, which it's usefully compatible with:
https://youtu.be/VjK-asaqDMU?t=4m12s

Apart from the charging issues (you can only charge 2 batteries at a time and it takes three) it's available for a Not Cheap, but not insanely expensive £183 at Amazon UK here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Newest-3-Axis-Handle-Brushless-Steady-G3-3-Axis-Gimbal/dp/B00LJNLZOW/ref=pd_sim_sbs_23_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1FZNKAX5E4V8G7VJNB24

Keep talking and nobody explodes

http://www.keeptalkinggame.com/

http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/16/8979601/keep-talking-and-nobody-explodes-gear-vr-release

THIS is so cool. Such a good idea, even outside of VR.

One person in VR has to dispose of a bomb and is the only one that can
see it the bomb disposal 'experts' have complex instructions to
convey....

A different dissapointing video about drifting in VR

Occulus Rift Drift (Castrol Advert)

Now this is a total advert and there's no money-shot, no interview with the driver or clear idea of if the thing actually worked or was slickly angled as a success. I'd recommend it if you're into drifting and pop-videos.

It'd be weird not being able to see your hands and the levers etc while you drive, weirder to drive without being able to actually see reality. However, a lot of time went into making this advert look like it was an actual thing.

360' cameras

Here are three 360' cameras:

Bubl



http://www.bublcam.com/

Here's the camera mounted on a drone:
https://youtu.be/G7lIYJLEP4U

 The legs of the DJphantom II get in the way a bit, highlighting the stitching.
It's neat... yet I'm left wanting crisper pictures. Would work for a defocussed backdrop, but I can probably do that with a goPro / panhead + DSLR solution (which I already have)



Ricoh theta

https://theta360.com/en/

Giant Thumbs :-)
Pictures are crisper. Video is really choppy though.









Google Jump

Currently the highest-quality video-capture and as-yet-unknown cloud based post-processing.






Kodak Pixpro
 
https://lensvid.com/gear/kodak-pixpro-sp360-seeing-action-camera-review/

Not so much of a 360 sphere... But interesting nonetheless.

VRcade

So here's a thing that doesn't exist yet that the Vive would be ideal for.

https://thevoid.com/

Also. Holy-crap that could be incredible.

*will* be incredible.

VR Arcades will be at the forefront of technology, where people went to play pacman in the 70's the next generation will go, in teams, into the arcade to play VR versions of themselves, logged in as their own characters from whichever MMORPG they were playing at home, where the sequence is "Best played at the arcade." or similar tie-ins.

Samsung Gear, HTC vive gamejam and the Avengers

Outside the Wellington pub, in the drizzly pints after joining the dazed and enthralled people who'd attended the HTC Vive GameJam at Somerset house.

Someone passed me a Gear VR and played a video that dropped me into the middle of a scene from the Avengers. 

http://vrscout.com/projects/building-the-latest-avengers-age-of-ultron-virtual-reality-experience/

The article above is about what I saw, but the words they've used do not do the experience justice. 
Pretty sweet. Still like watching a film,but with things going on all around me that mean I'd watch it again, and again, before I felt I'd seen what I could.

Ah, and the gamejam. Yeah there were people from Valve there, the guy that wrote Monument Valley and lots of people on the cutting-edge. It's a real shame I couldn't get into the kit and see what they'd done...

Ballooning, the winner by a nose

Ooh, Somone's put what I expect is a Ricoh Theta 360' camera on a SpaaaceBalloon :-)

http://www.eyesinspace.com/



Feel sick in VR? Add a nose: 

After a minute or so in my first Cardboard experience I was nauseous. Apparently adding a nose helps:

I expect to see 'Nose On / Off' sliders in VR prefs someday...

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/reduce-vr-sickness-just-add-virtual-nose/

Editing in VR

"VR, in much the same way participatory theater works depend on the unique but guided actions of an audience member, VR pieces take as their core mechanic the action and position of the body.The audience is not a viewer but a wearer, the content is not seen but worn. VR is choreography over camera work."

An interesting blog post:
http://elevr.com/vr-editing-the-choreography-of-attention/

Maya VR + Arnold

 My 3D weapon of choice is Maya and preferred renderer Arnold.
 Here's a link on how to render stereo from Maya.

http://www.andrewhazelden.com/blog/2012/04/domemaster3d-stereoscopic-shader-for-autodesk-maya/
 
I'd *LOVE* to drop this into my last project: The new Champions League stadium and see how it feels to look around the place. It's half-a-kilometer wide y'know :-)

Google JUMP and why Panoramic Twist is a thing.

One of the things I'd like to use is JUMP. One day soon it will be open-source... but expensive.
That'd 16 goPro cameras all sync'd up to one 'master' camera that operates power, start-stop and frame-synching. Clever stuff... the *really* clever stuff comes when Google get hold of the footage and make it stereo.

See, you can't film one pano and shift the camera by a few centimetres and then film another pano to get stereo because that's not how it works.

Google's software sorts this out, and after reading this colourful explanation for the reason you can't get stereo from two 'side by side' panoramas makes perfect sense:

http://elevr.com/elevrant-panoramic-twist/ 

I have to read everything else ever written on the rest of this amazing blog:
http://elevr.com/blog/

Pano 1

So I wanted to take pictures of the lounge and convert it to a spherical 360' panorama.

Used my panhead, oil-level, tripod and goPro Hero (original!) and tried a demo of Kolor AutoPano Giga.

The results were ... fine. Not great, first time - obviously needs some input tweaking. They also had my flatmate doing the washing up in them and I said I'd not put them online. Picture a typical pano with dodgy seams.

Then Chris suggested I try ICE - Microsoft's 'Image Composite Editor'. So that's what I'll do today.

This is while I wait for a cheapycheap Nexus 5 and Google Cardboard 2.0 to arrive in the post so I can play with all the interesting links I'm collecting, such as this one:

Stream your PC desktop to Cardboard:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Google-Cardboard-HMD-for-Tablet/step9/Stream-your-desktop-into-your-Android-device/






 

Play Portal, watch this

Instructions for this post:

* Play Portal
* Play this video
* Grin stupidly and realise why HTC Vive / SteamVR is an important step in VR

How to make VR in Nuke

Here's one answer to the first question I need answering:

Can we create VR content using existing skills?

The Foundry say so via this post about Nuke:

https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/about-us/news-awards/the-foundry-previews-technology-nab-2015/

Including some carrots-on-sticks here:

• Calibration and stitching of live-action 360 footage from multi-camera rigs
• Live connection to Oculus Rift to review stitching, grading and depth
• Support for compositing with ray-trace rendering for CG placement and projections 
• Spherical aware operations and viewing with equirectangular images

HTC Vive / SteamVR

This says many things that I'd write-up about Valve's SteamVR system from HTC.

"I would dedicate a room to this. This is one-step-closer to the holodeck"

TIN CANS and CARDBOAD

Original instructions for opening cans included the use of a hammer and chisel... and it was Ezra Warner who patented the can opener around 48 years after the first tin-cans were produced.

VR feels like someone invented the can-opener and is looking around for things to open with it.

Much like today: I bought Google Cardboard and I don't have a phone I can use in it - which means I might be buying my second-ever Android phone. I'm an iPhone user these days, so this is almost entirely for the purposes of creating a pitch to Google to get a Jump developer edition. Y'know - that 16-goPro rig that will film in every direction? I want to create VR content for youTube.
Hopefully it will be good enough to persuade Valve to give us a Vive / SteamVR devkit.


What brought this on? 

I watched a short VR film made at a Syrian refugee camp called "Clouds Over Sidra" at the MOMI museum in New York.

At first I was busy getting over the giant pixels, chromatic aberration and focal issues - and then as 12 year old Sidra talked about living in a camp of 84'000 people.... that faded and I felt there.

It was emotional. I watched the other two films they had running: Being hit by a Digital-Domain-train and scooped up by a giant baby and an arty, jumpy piece that had a trigger to make me run through a forest. Both were interesting, but the United Nations camp stuck with me.

A few days later I can't remember the pixels and blurryness - I remember looking up and seeing the UNICEF logo through the canvas of her tent as they ate dinner on the floor. That was the strangest, most interesting thing. I wasn't there, but memory said I might have been there in a dream. That's what brought this on. What can I make with this when I'm not confined to framing - to 16:9 letterboxes... ?  and soon with the Vive, not node-locked to a point-in-space.


Why me?

I've got 15+ years of experience in the world of VFX. I'm a CG supervisor at a small studio in Soho and I also teach at The Animation Workshop in Viborg Denmark. I've worked on Academy Award winning films, half-a-dozen TV series and over 40 commercials.

I'm absolutely fascinated by the potential for immersive creativity and am at a good point in my career to try out some more fringe technologies whilst continuing my work in Visual Effects.

Exciting, fascinating stuff.


Here's a trailer for "Clouds over Sidra":