Category: 360

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Nokia Finally Releases Its 360 Editing Software, Ozo Creator, On Windows

Nokia’ Finally Release It’s 360 Editing Software, Ozo Creator, On Windows

Nokia’s Ozo 360 degree camera is one of the most recognized offerings in a niche market, but it’s been missing a big piece of the puzzle until now.

Previously, anything recorded with the company’s $45,000 stereoscopic camera could be edited with its Ozo Creator on the Apple Mac Pro, but not on PC. That changed late last week, however, with the release of a Beta version of the software for Windows 10 PCs, which accompanied the launch of version 1.3.0. As part of the update, stitching time has also be reduced by 25 percent on Mac and 50 percent on a PC running the recommended specs.

Elsewhere, the update adds support for rendering MP4VR files, introduces an automatically optimized timeline based on a video’s length, and allows you to export both fisheye and stitched footage with a single action. It also helps to improve the colors captured by the camera’s eight 2K sensors and there’s a mirror preview feature that lets you watch content inside a headset, which is only available on Windows 10 right now.

Other Ozo software such as its wireless control app, Remote, and its video preview service, Preview, are also now available in Beta on Windows.

Head of Presence Capture Guido Voltolina told TechCrunch that Windows 10 support become necessary as “the Apple platform hasn’t been involved with the newest HMDs”. OSX still doesn’t support major headsets like the Oculus Rift, so allowing filmmakers to edit 360 movies on an operating system that will then let them view that content is a big bonus for Ozo.

You may well have already seen some VR films shots with Ozo. Promotional content for this year’s Suicide Squad was shot with the camera, for example. Nokia is hoping that simplifying its editing software and making it more accessible will help establish it at the dominant product in an emerging market, especially since it slashed the price of the camera by $15,000 back in August.

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The ‘Mule’ 360 Video Project Could Be VR’s Darkest Corner

The ‘Mule’ 360 Video Project Could Be VR’s Darkest Corner

At the Hollywood-focused conference this week, VR on the Lot, I sat in a coffin to try out the latest project from Dark Corner Studios, a company which bills itself “The Darkest Part of Virtual Reality.”

“Buried or cremated?” I was asked as I took a seat in the plush coffin.

I chose buried and put the headset on. Now from here on out I’m going to spoil pretty much the entire plot, because I think it represents a new kind of intimate horror worth discussing, and I’m not sure how many people are going to get the chance to see the project, or how many will actually want to see it. Both Dark Corner’s predecessor Catatonic and the one I experienced, Mule, are directed by Guy Shelmerdine, founder of the studio. Dark Corner pitches itself as specializing “in crafting experiences that transport the viewer to places they could never visit in real life — or wouldn’t dare to.” I think that’s a fair description.

So, SPOILER ALERT: Inside Mule I found myself naked with a woman in what looked like a cheap hotel. Then I had a heroin overdose, passed out, and was discovered by the hotel housekeeper. I died at the hospital, went to the afterlife and then the autopsy table, where drug dealers gutted me to find the drugs I’d apparently been carrying in my stomach. Then they had a funeral for me and I was buried, per my choice earlier.

I found myself laughing, my body tensing and arms folding across my stomach during the horrifying morgue/autopsy table scene. Being seated in the coffin is by design, propping my upper body up in a rough approximation of the ill-fated person I would become for a few minutes. I’ve used “I” to describe the first-hand experience so far, but that doesn’t accurately describe the feeling of being inside this headset and seeing this particular piece of content.

It was more like I was seeing through someone else’s eyes, knowing I’m not in huge danger and that in a few minutes I would return to the world I knew outside. In this mindset, I got a first-person ticket to this man’s sad, helpless and horrifying end. I couldn’t decide whether I should sympathize, empathize, judge harshly or just look away — and I found myself escaping via laughter. This was a very personal, fast-paced kind of horror I’d not experienced before.

Mule was filmed with a custom 360-degree camera rig featuring Sony A7Sii cameras, created in partnership with Radiant Images in Los Angeles. Visual effects were added by The Mill in Los Angeles.

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‘Fifty Shades Darker’ Director Is Creating A VR Experience For The Film With Lots of ‘Action’

‘Fifty Shades Darker’ Director Is Creating A VR Experience For The Film With Lots of ‘Action’

Notice: The trailer embedded below and some of the content of this article contain explicit material.

Buckle up ladies and gents: VR is about to get a little hot and steamy. James Foley, director of Fifty Shades Darker, stated on stage at VR on the Lot that he is creating a VR experience for the upcoming erotic romance film. Details are scarce on the project at this time, but it was described as full of lots “action” — which can be inferred to mean something quite different than epic fight scenes or car chases.

Foley has been keeping the cast of the film on set after filming the core film sequences to bring in a 360-degree crew for additional work. The experience will be fully live-action with characters from the film, all shot directly in 360-degrees. We’re not sure how long the experience will last — hah! — or what equipment is being used — double hah! — but it is sounding like a fully-fledged high-quality Hollywood production. However, this has been described as a piece of promotional marketing material, meaning the exact degree of nudity and sex in the experience could be lower than the film itself.

For those blissfully unaware, the Fifty Shades series of books (by E. L. James) and films feature two main characters locked in a torrid love affair: Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey. Steele (played by Dakota Johnson) and Grey (played by Jamie Dornan) reprise their roles for the second film in the series. I used the phrase “erotic romance” very deliberately earlier, as the first film in the franchise, Fifty Shades of Grey, featured just about as many on-screen sex scenes as it did non-sex scenes.

Virtual reality can be used for lots of amazing and powerful things — one of which is porn. Interest in the topic is reaching all-time highs on the internet and former adult star Sasha Grey even explained that she felt VR porn was “too in your face.”

Regardless of whether or not you enjoy the books and films for what they are — poorly written, poorly acted, hot, steamy, arousing romance stories that could arguably be described as high-production value pornography — this is good news for VR. The bigger names and properties that get involved, the better off our budding new industry is in the grand scheme of things.

Fifty Shades Darker releases in theaters on February 10th, 2017.

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will.i.am Says Black Eyed Peas VR Experience “Is Not Us Performing In Front Of a 360 Camera”

will.i.am Says Black Eyed Peas VR Experience “Is Not Us Performing In Front Of a 360 Camera”

At today’s VR On The Lot event at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am took the stage to open the show with a few remarks. He concluded his speech by announcing that he is “working with my team to create a VR experience for the Black Eyed Peas and it is not us performing in front of a 360 cameras.”

The popular musicians words are a shot at the glut of 360 video experiences that many musicians and other creatives have begun to employ in an effort to get in on the immersive revolution early. will.i.am does not consider these types of experiences to be worthy of VR’s potential. According to him:

“In this world of VR creators create worlds. I can’t wait until it is just the norm. Like ‘yo check out my world.’

Becuase what I don’t want musicians to do is be like ‘check out my VR’ and I just slap the camera and do the same thing I would do in real life instead of creating experiences that are just as enriched as real life.”

Syntax aside, this is a valid point for the VR community as it stands today. There does seem to be a growing “set it and forget it” attitude surrounding 360 content wherein filmmakers are content to simply translate raw footage of an event or performance without much creative improvement.

will.i.am’s vision for VR tech is one where the form factors of the devices we use are more informed by fashion and utility than they are by technological limitations. He wants the industry to “Think the likes of Gucci and Louis Vitton…there’s no reason we shouldn’t have awesome jackets with the computation in the back to keep the head light where the face isn’t getting hot.”

Finally, will.i.am stated that he “can’t wait for the day when, similar to clubs, there are physical places where you go to to have enriched VR experiences. I can’t wait for the day where more musicians want to work with developers and world builders.”

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The ‘Assassin’s Creed’ Movie Is Getting a Cinematic VR Experience

The ‘Assassin’s Creed’ Movie Is Getting a Cinematic VR Experience

Hollywood is knee-deep in their latest attempts to revitalize movie adaptations of video game properties. Fans around the world are still recovering from the damage that the likes of DOOM, anything Uwe Boll touches, and the litany of other failed projects (what was Nintendo thinking?!?!) have done to irreparably damage the concept of a movie based on a video game. Warcraft did its best to right the ship — with mixed results — and Assassin’s Creed is the next in line when the feature film releases this December.

With the advent of VR technology, we’re also seeing a trend of Hollywood-caliber VR experiences based on popular film properties. Disney is getting on board in that regard and there are tons of VR adaptations of TV shows and movies already available to view.

“It’s not a game,” said Matthew Lewis, president of Practical Magic VR during a presentation at AMD’s Capsaicin press event according to the official Ubisoft blog. “We’re capturing and re-creating the world from the film in really high quality, using massive textures [and] complex geometry. It’s all being painstakingly done with 3D scanners. When I say painstakingly, it was our team that was literally there in a warehouse in Malta in the summer, scanning swords and weapons and costumes from this movie. It’s very, very hard work,” Lewis added. “We’re going really, really far trying to create this experience so that it’s really on par with the motion-picture experience.”

A source close to the project has also informed us that the VR experience will star none other than the film’s leading actor, Michael Fassbender (X-Men: Days of Future Past, Prometheus.)

Since Lewis, Ubisoft, and AMD prefer to keep this Assassin’s Creed experience appropriately shrouded in darkness and mystery for the time being, we don’t really know much else. I sincerely hope that it ends with a pulse-pounding Leap of Faith as a finale, because experiencing that in first-person VR would be incredible.

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Adidas Launches New Soccer Boot Through London PlayStation VR Experience

Adidas Launches New Soccer Boot Through London PlayStation VR Experience

The PlayStation VR launch is creeping ever closer with October 13th right around the corner. While gamers and enthusiast await their personal devices, Polynoid, Woodblock, and Adidas have teamed up for a unique promotional event utilizing PS VR. Like the next groundbreaking cell phone release or a Black Friday sale, shoe releases can turn into major events and draw massive crowds. Adidas is bringing a new flavor to the shoe launch, immersing customers in a virtual space for their new Stellar Pack football boot.

The first time for such a release, Adidas stores across Europe will have PlayStation VR units on hand so customers can try the Stellar Pack experience. In 7.1 surround sound and full 360 degree video that lasts about a minute, users are thrown into outer space to see the new white and gold shoe assemble at a molecular level and collide with meteors.

It’s a curious setting for a virtual shoe launch for sure, but gives patrons a close up look at the football boot. Unless there’s a more involved experience in the future, we can’t really see this style of promo catching on in the shoe market, but the VR excitement alone will surely draw people in.

Polynoid is an established director and producer of short films and commercials and Woodblock is also an established is animated production. Adidas brings nearly 100 years of experience to the partnership, a mainstay in the show industry worldwide.

The Stellar Pack experience will be available until October 9th at Adidas stores in London, Barcelona, Madrid, Berlin, Paris, and Milan. The new shoe hit soccer fields on September 27th, worn by players such as Paul Pogba, Gareth Bale, Luis Suarez, and Mesut Özil. It will be available for consumer purchase today, on the 30th. The Stellar Pack Adidas X Boot will be priced at €275.