Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
A Laguna Beach, California-based company is looking to bridge the gap between VR headsets and sci-fi style holodecks by combining live 3D virtual reality broadcasts with plenoptic capture technology to allow viewers full freedom of movement in a VR broadcast.
Yes, it’s tough to see exactly what that means. Imagine this: You’re watching a VR broadcast of a basketball game. The ref steps in front of you and you lean to the side to see around him. This wasn’t previously possible with VR video capture technology, but now it’s happening.
Moving towards the holodeck
According to Engadget, NextVR wants to add plenoptic, or light-field capture, technology to its existing equipment in order to allow viewers to look around with a full six degrees of freedom.
The website said that the technology is comparable to that used by Lytro cameras which allow users to change the focus on a picture, even if it has already been taken.
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Officials at NextVR told the website that it will use a patented method to create a 3D geometric model of a scene that can be used for VR headsets and augmented reality units. David Cole, the co-founder of the company, called it the “next step towards creating a holodeck.”
Existing tech demos and live broadcasts produced thus far by Next VR “already include depth information used to create the 3D effect that really brought ‘you-are-there’ feeling, as shown in recent tests with the NBA and NHL,” Engadget said, adding that while watching sporting events in 3D “had always been a neat trick… but the restrictions of 3D killed the immersion.”
With its new light field technology, NextVR is promising to deliver an experience that would allow the viewer to look around a referee that is standing in front of a camera, or to watch a play happening at the other end of the court or rink from a better angle, the website added. In short, the company is trying to bring the experience of “being there” into the home.
Technical nitty-gritty
So how does it work? As the company explained in a recent press release, light field technology captures the direction from which light enters the camera, as well as its color and intensity. Then NextVR will apply this information to create geometric models of the entire scene. This information is then combined with existing stereoscopic video data.
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The result, NextVR said, is “a completely photo-realistic, ultra-high-resolution video environment in which viewers are free to look around like never before possible.” Users can change their view when using devices that support positional tracking, like Oculus’s “Crescent Bay” prototype or Valve’s new “Vive” headset.
NextVR was launched in 2009, and the company said that it currently has an IP portfolio that contains more than 21 granted and pending patents for the capture, compression, transmission, and display of virtual reality content. It has been researching and developing plenoptic capture and display technology for the past three years.
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