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The VR documentary made for the Oculus Rift is here
Want a surreal experience? Try watching a documentary about virtual reality on the device it's meant to cover. As promised, Condition One has released Zero Point, an investigation of the virtues and vices of VR that you can only watch on an Oculus Rift headset. The $15 title ($12 for the first week) won't provide shocking insights to its target audience -- you're clearly interested in VR if you bought a developer kit -- but it does provide a range of panoramic shots that show off the potential for immersive movies. You can always try the free demo, so there's no harm in visiting the source link if you're eager to do more with your Rift than play games and paint in 3D.
You can soon watch a doc about virtual reality on Oculus Rift
If you'd rather that your non-game Oculus Rift experiences be nonfiction, it looks like that wish is coming your way rather soon. Next week, Zero Point hits Steam and it offers full 360 degree views of a Department of Defense military training camp, a beach scene and even the extremely crowded LA Convention Center during E3 2013. The rub of the video is that it's the first of its kind -- a documentary about virtual reality, filmed in VR and made for the platform. It's very meta. Each scene is explorable, with either head tracking, a game controller or a mouse running the action. It's apparently compatible with all past-and-future Oculus dev kits, and will cost $15 come its October 28th release. However, IGN notes that if you purchase before November 4th it'll only run you $12. Want a preview before you buy? Of course you do; just head past the break for that.
Condition ONE releases new player with Ultra HD playback and live streaming
Way back in 2011, I told you about Condition ONE, a video recording system and video player app that "promised to allow viewers to become completely immersed in the event they are watching, thanks to the proprietary camera technology used to record the event and the iPad itself. No longer would our view of events be limited to the journalist's point of view, the app promised. Through it, viewers could tilt, pivot and swipe around the footage, giving themselves complete control to manipulate the footage and change their field of view at will." Yesterday Condition ONE announced an update that allows its video player to display premium 2.7K or live streaming immersive video content. The live streaming and enhanced resolution enables content creators to immerse their viewers in live events in ultra-realistic detail. The Condition ONE capture system was also updated with support for Ultra HD Red and GoPro cameras so content creators can actually shoot that ultra high-res footage. If you haven't used the app yet, go ahead a grab it. It's a free download and I think you'll be blown away choosing your own POV of the footage you're watching.
Condition One immerses iPads and iPhones in 180-degree video, shakes up dreary apps (video)
Video in tablet magazines and similar apps sometimes -- okay, often -- comes across as a grafted-on extra. Condition One, a startup by war photographer Danfung Dennis, wants to make video an intrinsic part of the experience by taking advantage of the motion sensors in smartphones and tablets. Video shot from a DSLR or similar camera is converted into a 180-degree format that you can swipe or tilt through on an iOS device to get a more involving look. It's a lot more lively than plain movies, and Dennis sees the technique being used for documentaries and tours where it would help to put viewers directly in the action. Producers only need off-the-shelf hardware and software, too. There's a show-off app at the source link to get an overall sense of what the footage is like, but if you're looking for the first official projects, a pilot project has just started that's bringing apps from Discovery, Mercedes-Benz, Popular Science (below), The Guardian and XL Recordings.
The future of photojournalism: Condition ONE puts you in the middle of world events
Back in April I gave you a preview of Condition ONE, a disruptive technology about to wash over traditional journalism. The app promised to allow viewers to become completely immersed in the event they are watching thanks to the proprietary camera technology used to record the event and the iPad itself. No longer would our view of events be limited to the journalist's point of view, the app promised. Through it, viewers could tilt, pivot, and swipe around the footage, giving themselves complete control to manipulate the footage and change their field of view at will. Condition ONE is now live in the App Store, and I'm happy to say it's lived up to its promise. The app is the brainchild of war documentarian Danfung Dennis, whose film Hell and Back Again won the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival. In April I said that Condition ONE could be likened to the moving photographs in the world of Harry Potter, but after Dennis gave me an exclusive preview of the app that I've played with for the last few days, I realize that Condition ONE is more like the moving images of Harry Potter on steroids. Utilizing custom camera rigs, the technology allows photojournalists to capture an all-encompassing view of what's going on around them. This means journalists are now able to bring in the viewer -- who traditionally had a very passive role in an event -- as an active participant. Using the app, viewers can rotate the iPad in any direction to get a different perspective on the action. It works so well it actually does make you feel like you're there. While watching footage of Libyan soldiers running across a field, I actually jumped in my seat as I heard a bang go off "behind" me. When I rotated around, I saw that I was standing next to a massive gatling gun. The app has a nice layout that gives you several options of how you can explore the footage it offers. When you launch Condition ONE, you're able to search by filmmakers or stories. Selecting "Stories" will take you to a screen that shows you all the available stories. Tap any story to view its individual episodes. No video footage is actually embedded in the app when you download it from the App Store; instead, you can choose to download an event's footage on the "Episodes" page. A short preview of the event is usually available to download, or you can choose to download the full version for the "full immersive experience." Because you're downloading a file that offers a full immersive 360 degree experience and not just a traditional video file, the sizes can be quite large. For example, a 1 minute 49 second preview is 194 MB, and a 9 minute 40 second movie is 1.6 GB. A different 11 minute episode is 2.5 GB. However, the large file sizes are well worth the download. What's almost as good as the immersive footage itself are the video biographies of the filmmakers. As you view a bio of a filmmaker, his image moves just like those in Harry Potter photographs. Tap on the filmmaker's body to see him come to life and explain why he does what he does. Hearing from the photojournalists who are out on the front lines, many times literally putting their lives at risk to report on the atrocities committed against the world's least fortunate, is nothing short of moving. Particularly poignant was French journalist Patrick Chauvel talking about how wars move like tides around the world, and why he chose to live the life of a war documentarian: "You meet people who need your story. I feel responsible for the people who are far away suffering...so I tell their story to people who don't have the time and who can't go to their places. No one will ever forget what happened in the death camps in Germany because of [photojournalism]." He goes on to say that photojournalists are witnesses to crimes and without a witness there is no crime. That's what makes Condition ONE such a powerful and disruptive tool in photojournalism. It makes everyone a witness to an event as if they were actually there living it. After using the app I think it's fair to put Danfung Dennis with the likes of entertainment filmmakers James Cameron or George Lucas. Both filmmakers were visionaries who had to create their own custom camera rigs in order to advance filmmaking. And that's what Dennis had to do to advance his vision for the future of photojournalism. It's the proprietary camera rigs and software that Dennis and his team have created that allows them to record events like no one before. But unlike Cameron's and Lucas's movies these events aren't fantasy, and they have a very real and costly effect on human lives. You can check out the gallery below and also this video to see how Condition ONE works, but you've really got to try it out for yourself to get the full experience. Condition ONE is now available as a free download in the App Store. %Gallery-139119%
Condition ONE app combines iPad and photo journalism
Traditional photo journalism has always had a limited point of view. You could only see what was in front of the camera. Video photo journalism added a new dimension to reporting as the camera could pan around an area giving the user views from multiple vantage points. However, with both photo and video journalism, viewers have no control over what they see in the shot. War documentarian Danfung Dennis is on the brink of changing this thanks to a custom camera system and the iPad. The former is a new tool for the photo journalist to record events, and the latter is a tool for the viewer to immerse themselves in that event and control what they see. Dennis created an app called Condition ONE, which allows viewers to use their iPads as fully interactive windows into photo journalist images. As you can see in the video below (warning, NSFW language), Condition ONE allows you to interact with a current scene in what is probably most easily comparable to a moving photograph from the world of Harry Potter. Users can pan up, down and rotate around to get a complete look at an event in a set moment in time as if they were actually there. Dennis told Time that the point of Condition ONE is to create a new form of storytelling that will "shake viewers out of their numbness to traditional media and provide them a powerful emotional experience." While there is no hard launch date or price, the Condition ONE app is set to debut in mid-2011 and is sure to change the way many see an event that has occurred halfway around the world. "Once viewers enter a video experience, they can move the tablet in any direction and see the corresponding field of view," says Dennis. "The traditional two-dimensional, rectangular frame is shattered as viewers step inside the frame and experience the stories as the protagonists."
