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Posts Tagged ‘Immersive’

OKO is an immersive viewfinder for your smartphone camera

02 Aug

There’s an abundance of smartphone camera accessories available but until now we’ve been missing one item: a viewfinder. Thanks to the OKO crowdfunding project on Kickstarter this gap might soon be filled, however.

The OKO is designed to do pretty much the same things as a conventional viewfinder. It blocks screen reflections, offering an immersive and undistracted view of the scene and allowing for a more stable shooting stance when holding it up to your face. Its design is far from conventional, however.

The OKO resembles a VR-headset and is compatible with most 4.7″ and larger smartphones. The mobile device is inserted at the front and in the bottom there is a fairly large hole, allowing you to control the camera on the touch screen of your phone (but probably also letting some light in).

In front of the phone screen two 6x magnifying oculars provide a view that should be much closer to the real scene than what your smartphone display alone can provide and many photographers might find that using two eyes to frame your shots is more comfortable than just using one, like with a traditional camera viewfinder.

The OKO’s major downside is pretty obvious: you’ll look pretty ridiculous wearing the thing on your head while hunting for photo opportunities. For some this might be a small price to pay for the perfect shot, however.

If you fall into that latter group, you can now pledge between $ 39 for the early bird basic kit and $ 160 for a full-blown package including 4 accessory lenses. At the time of writing the project has almost reached its funding goal with 56 more days to go, so there’s a good chance the project will go ahead. Shipping is expected in March 2019.

Watch the video below for more information or head straight to the OKO Kickstarter page.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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A Taste of Japan: Immersive Animated Restaurant Shifts with the Seasons

15 Apr

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

The exclusive experience of dining at this Tokyo restaurant, which serves just eight patrons a day, is not really about the food – though Saga Beef restaurant Sagaya-Ginza is not necessarily lacking in quality. It’s just that watching nature spring to life all around you, cycling through the seasons to represent some of Japan’s most striking natural beauty, tends to eclipse whatever’s on your plate. Art collective teamLab, known for their creative projection-based installations, created a multi-sensory immersive experience with ‘Worlds Unleashed and Then Connecting.’

In classic teamLab form, this projection is not just immersive, but also interactive, responding to the dishes as they’re placed on the table as well as movements of the diners and servers. While other well-known works by the collective tend to unfold within a larger space, like a warehouse or gallery, this installation is private and intimate.

“When a dish is placed on the table, the world contained within the dish is unleashed, unfolding onto the table and into the surrounding space,” the artists explain. “The worlds unleashed from each dish connect in the external space creating a new larger world. The worlds unleashed are affected by the other dishes on the table.”

“For example, a bird unleashed from one dish can perch on the branch of a tree unleashed from another. The trees that grow from each dish are not identical; their sizes and shapes are affected by the worlds unleashed by the other dishes on the table. These unleashed worlds are also affected by your behavior. If you stand still, a tiny bird might alight on your hand; if you move suddenly, it might fly away. The worlds unleashed from the dishes on the table influence each other, react to the actions of the visitors, and combine to create one single continuous world. The world is constantly changing from moment to moment and no two moments are alike.”

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[ By SA Rogers in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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Real Holodeck: 360-Degree Immersive Home Gaming Environment

08 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Gaming & Computing & Technology. ]

interactive gaming room design

Using a series of networked camera-and-projector units, this working demonstration turns an entire living room into and interactive gaming environment. Dubbed RoomAlive (a successor to IllumiRoom, featured previously), this augmented reality expansion from Microsoft could transform not just the way we game but ultimately the way to interact with everyday spaces both private and public.

Existing objects and furniture within the space are automatically mapped and integrated into a given game or experience. The constituent procam units are auto-calibrating and can self-localize so long as there is some overlap in their fields of view. The entire array is designed to be simple to install and use – it effectively sets itself up once you put the technology in place.

3d mapped room interior

generated virtual creatures holodeck

The system creates a depth-aware 3D model of the room, identifying vertical and horizontal surfaces, which is plugged into a Unity gaming engine. It then populates the space with whatever the user desires, from passive environments to active games. Virtual characters can navigate along the floor then up along the walls, for instance, but users can also dodge and shoot, interacting as characters themselves. Items in the room can also become props, toys or tools within a programmed scenario.

roomalive live demo illumiroom

virtual character gaming control

This particular demo integrates six Kinect cameras to show various scenes and scenarios – just the tip of the iceberg. These could, of course, also be deployed in other settings to turn public or institutional spaces into fully interactive environments. For now, this is just a demonstration, but as these technologies become less expensive and more accessible it is easy to imagine commercial applications of all kinds.

home living room design

immersive gaming experience design

From from the Microsoft development team: “RoomAlive is a proof-of-concept prototype that transforms any room into an immersive, augmented entertainment experience. Our system enables new interactive projection mapping experiences that dynamically adapts content to any room. Users can touch, shoot, stomp, dodge and steer projected content that seamlessly co-exists with their existing physical environment.”

interactive living room gaming

textured map room holodeck

“The basic building blocks of RoomAlive are projector-depth camera units, which can be combined through a scalable, distributed framework. The projector-depth camera units are individually auto-calibrating, self-localizing, and create a unified model of the room with no user intervention. We investigate the design space of gaming experiences that are possible with RoomAlive and explore methods for dynamically mapping content based on room layout and user position. Finally we showcase four experience prototypes that demonstrate the novel interactive experiences that are possible with RoomAlive and discuss the design challenges of adapting any game to any room.”

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[ By WebUrbanist in Gaming & Computing & Technology. ]

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Surround Screen: ‘Illumiroom’ Immersive Gaming Projection

11 Jan

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

illumiroom surround system projection

What ever happened to in-home 3D technology and virtual reality? Perhaps futurists got a bit ahead of themselves, and maybe the way our eyes and minds focus means that many entertainment experiences must be focused on a screen … but that does not mean they are limited to it.

illumiroom first person shooter

From Microsoft: “IllumiRoom uses a Kinect for Windows camera and a projector to blur the lines between on-screen content and the environment we live in allowing us to combine our virtual and physical worlds. For example, our system can change the appearance of the room, induce apparent motion, extend the field of view, and enable entirely new game experiences.”

illumiroom immersive 3d gaming

Beyond a cool gimmick or special effect, on the one hand, or a practical extension of screen space on the other, this is about enhancing your experience – tapping into the background, like surround sound does.

illumiroom concept futuristic gaming

In some cases, context can be added – snowflakes sifting downward as you race on a MarioKart winter level. In other cases, useful peripheral elements can show you the broader built environment beyond your main area of focus – skies and streets above, below or off to the site in wireframe format.

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[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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Immersive 3D Video

26 Nov

Playback of a 3D video stream of a dance performance in an immersive CAVE environment at the UC Davis KeckCAVES facility ( www.keckcaves.org ). The 3D video data was provided by the CITRIS Tele-Immersion lab at UC Berkeley ( http ) The first half of the video was shot from a fixed camera position outside of the CAVE; the second half was shot hand-held.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

 
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Enhancing Spatial Cognition in Immersive Virtual Environments

31 Oct

SPEAKER & AFFILIATION: Victoria Interrante, University of Minnesota DESCRIPTION & LINK: This lecture has been videocast from the Computer Science Department at UNC. The abstract of this lecture and a brief speaker biography is available at research.csc.ncsu.edu A full transcript of this presentation is available at www.ncsu.edu
Video Rating: 0 / 5

 
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Posted in Retouching in Photoshop