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NBC's Winter Olympics VR streams will work on almost any device
The Winter Olympics is getting a virtual reality makeover. NBC will present over 50 hours of VR coverage from the games in South Korea next month, using Intel True VR technology to create 360-degree immersive environments. It's the same style of tech that's been adopted by BT Sport, MLB, UFC, PGA and NBA, and it made an appearance at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio, but it's the first time the Winter Games has been given the treatment (they only happen every four years, after all, and VR has only taken flight in recent times).
YouTube's first live 360-degree videos were little more than tech demos
Last week, YouTube started supporting live 360-degree video streams in a bid for more-immersive video content. Though users have been able to upload and watch 360-degree video for over a year, it's only now that Google is introducing the option to beam such content live to thousands of viewers. Still, having the ability to broadcast this video in real time isn't the same as delivering a compelling visual experience. Indeed, the first uses of YouTube's new technology show that it's going to take a lot of creative thinking from directors and designers to actually make interesting content.
YouTube reportedly plans to support live 360-degree videos
360-degree videos are all the rage nowadays, and YouTube is at the forefront of that trend. The internet service began supporting this type of content last March, which it later expanded to be compatible with virtual reality headsets. But it's not stopping there. According to BuzzFeed News, YouTube's now working to bring live 360-degree videos to its platform, although there isn't a timeline of when it plans to launch said feature.
You can now post your interactive 360-degree footage on YouTube
If you picked up a camera that captures video in 360 degrees, sharing that footage just got a little easier. YouTube now supports 360-degree video uploads, so getting the action to eager viewers is a breeze. What's more, if folks watch with the YouTube Android app, moving a phone or tablet pans around all the different angles. I tried it out with the Red Bull F-1 video above, and it's pretty awesome. The same action is done with a mouse click in Chrome too, and support for iOS is on the way. When you upload the file, there's a script you'll need to run to tack on the appropriate metadata, insuring that the footage displays its 360-degree views properly. Soon, that process will be automatic, but for now, it's a necessary step. Ready to see it in action? Well, there's a playlist on the other side of the break that'll allow you to do just that.
World's largest indoor photograph shows off fancy old Czech library
If you think Google's seven-gigapixel renderings of world famous art museums are impressive, get a load of this: a guy named Jeffrey Martin just produced a record breaking panoramic photo of a reading room in Prague's Strahov monastery library, and it's got the internet giant's Art Project beat by more than 30,000 megapixels. Not that Google's pictures are anything to scoff at, but the 40-gigapixel, 360 degree, 283GB image is something of a digital masterwork. According to Wired, the photograph, taken in February on a GigaPanBot-mounted Canon 550D, is comprised of 2,947 unique images that took a computer program more than four days to stitch together. If you're a fan of 18th century European literature, Franz Anton Maulbertsch's trompe l'oeil paintings, or just ridiculously detailed digital photography, you can peep the image in its entirety at the source link.
EPFL's fly-inspired 3D camera takes omnipresence to the third dimension (video)
Just in case you were concerned that the 3D revolution hadn't yet taken over the scientific research field, EPFL is here to convince you that all is well. Researchers from a pair of EPFL laboratories have recently invented a fly-inspired dome camera that's not only loaded down with cameras to snag views from (nearly) all angles, but also equipped with an output algorithm that constructs a bona fide 3D image. The trickeration lies within the hardware platform, which calculates depth on each camera image and then reconstructs a 3D visual based on how far away things truly are. That's a far more sophisticated approach than the stereoscopic one used on existing 3D televisions, as the depth would (theoretically) change as your angle of view changed. There's an outstanding patent application on the approach, and if the world at large latches on, we could see this thing used for "video surveillance, movie making, and creating backgrounds for video games." Among other things, of course. A demonstrative vid awaits you just after the break.
