QPORIT

Samsung continued its strong support of VR at the Barcelona Mobile World Congress. However there were no game-changing announcements.

Basically, they...

• improved the camera
• introduced a 360 x 180 2D camera, and 
• live cast the session via Gear VR.

LIVE VR CASTING

It is exciting to see VR Live-Casting. However, the quality of the Samsung production was not as sophisticated as NextVR is beginning to achieve. The resolution was OK, not great. The camera placement was too far from the stage. And it appeared to be 2D, not 3D. (There was also a problem, separate from VR, watching the webcast on my computer, with the signal being lost several times. It could be my computer/connection but other webcasts have been OK.)

As discussed in an earlier story in QPORIT about NextVR, one important feature of 360 live-casting is that the camera be placed as if it were at the location where a viewer would most like to be, so that the main subject looks human-sized, as if you a few feet away. Usually that means putting the camera onstage. Or in row A, Center, standing. (Note: For 3D to contribute to the scene -- when it is there at all -- it is also valuable to have a number of items - or people- at slightly different distances to enhance the feeling of depth.)


GALAXY S7 PHONES

There were modest improvements in the phones...

• Faster processing
• Micro SD slot for extended memory
• An always-on mode
• Improvements in the phone's camera, especially in low light
• “Dynamic” panoramas
• A fisheye lens attachment

In addition, the pre-order bundle includes a free Gear VR!


THE GEAR 360 CAMERA

While mentioning the Project Beyond camera briefly, referring to it as available for "professional" use, Samsung introduced a new consumer VR camera, with two hemispherical lenses, allowing full spherical 360 x 180 degree coverage. Each hemisphere has a 1920 x 1920 pixel resolution. The S7 can be synced to the camera and will automatically stitch the image to a 2940 x 1920 video. It was not entirely clear, but it seemed as if the video can even be streamed live from the phone to a remote Gear VR. The Gear 360 camera should be available later this year.


WHAT'S MISSING

Next steps for VR to continue to improve include...

• A 3D 360 camera with
• automatic stitching,
• much higher resolution (10 to 100 times the number of pixels per frame than the Gear 360)
• the ability to live-stream a full spherical 3D image
• corresponding battery life and memory storage for 2 hrs at a time
• an affordable price
• An easy to use editor (editing, stitching, post production FX) for 3D full spherical videos

THE WEBCAST
https://youtu.be/O6KeASdz2AI

SAMSUNG HOME
www.samsung.com

PROJECT BEYOND
http://www.thinktankteam.info/beyond/

Labels: Galaxy S7, Gear 360, Gear VR, Project Beyond, SAMSUNG, smartphone, Virtual Reality, VR