8 ms·

Next Attenborough documentary being filmed for Oculus Rift

67 points by shaneofalltrad 13y ago

shaneofalltrad 13y ago
His first documentaries gave me I life long passion for nature and animals. I hope they do it right.
vdaniuk 13y ago
I want to express my great respect to David Attenborough and love for his documentaries. They are absolutely incredible. For me, this is a killer content for Oculus Rift, even if they are owned by Facebook now.
aresant 13y ago
I subscribe to the r/oculus where this is the big thread and top comment is from the team behind idea and slightly debunks the claim while suggesting they'd like to kickstart it: Hey guys, I'm from Atlantic Productions and this whole article is about 60% correct. We're currently working with the rift and we're really excited by it. We've got a couple of things in development at the moment, maybe three things in fact. They're all potentially fantastic projects but as you all know it's quite a difficult thing right now to fund development of these things. We're considering putting out a kickstarter for a project but we'd only put it out there if we knew you guys were interested. So as a very simple show of hands kind of thing, if we were to make an immersive documentary, where you are in the scene, would you be interested in helping fund that in a kickstarter? Would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/22rqvu/next_attenborough_documentary_filmed_for_the_rift/ http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/22rqvu/next_attenbor...
- johnbm 13y ago
  Yeah, the only way this works is if it's in an immersive environment... either a virtual theatre, or a 3D scene. But you cannot play 3D movies on an Oculus Rift, the lack of head tracking on the camera causes instant motion sickness in my experience.
badsock 13y ago
There's something I don't understand: I've heard that one of the keys for avoiding VR motion sickness is having both rotational and positional head tracking. A naive interpretation would be that for that to be possible from a prerecording, you'd have to have a 360 degree recording from the perspective of each cubic millimeter whithin the given volume of space that you'd expect someone's head to move. Of course that's impossible, and there's certainly ways to interpolate from fewer viewpoints, but I've not heard of any that sounds like it's convincingly solved the problem. Is there one?
- tizzdogg 13y ago
  Without even considering positional head tracking, just the act of rotating your head moves the location of your eyeballs in space (our eyes are not the center of rotation of our head, our neck is). So I'm also doubtful that this will end up looking any better than a simple 3d QuickTime VR sphere.
  - MrScruff 13y ago
    Having viewed one of these mono 360 clips on an Occulus I would say it's a significant step up from watching it on a monitor. However you're right that a truly compelling experience will require full 3D reconstruction of the environment so you can render both eyes in realtime with head tracking. That's probably feasible for some types of simple scenes but probably not a nature documentary.
- beekays 13y ago
  Regarding interpolation from fewer viewpoints, you might check out these demos if you haven't seen them. Requires Flash. http://lightfield.stanford.edu/lfs.html http://lightfield.stanford.edu/lfs.html I could certainly imagine a kind of 360 degree light field slideshow app with current technology. Not sure how much entertainment value is to be had there, though.
  - badsock 13y ago
    Thanks for the link! That's just what I was looking for re: interpolation. Looking their acquisition rig, however, it seems like a choice between a large array of cameras, or one camera and a still image. It will be interesting to see if that can be made to work as video, with a large FOV, and interpolated movement on 3 axes. Seems like a big challenge.
conchy 13y ago
Attenborough has been pushing the envelope of new visual technologies for a LONG time. Bravo to him for keeping at it. I can't wait to see it.
- shaneofalltrad 13y ago
  I would like to see the Tokay Gecko again, but this time walking in front of me 3D, that would be awesome. So not just nature, but science in this form.
machbio 13y ago
After Bashing Facebook for acquiring Oculus Rift, finally there is something to show the hn people - thinking beyond the use cases previously thought will help bringing the technology closer to consumers. Oculus Rift use case of hardcore gaming is still alive and facebook acquiring is a good nothing so that people David and his team can invest time to bring their content Oculus Rift. Thanks David for showing us new uses for the Oculus Rift..
- shaneofalltrad 13y ago
  I still hope this will be cross device as most of the stuff. I can still see myself using Sony's product as well if they go this direction.
- bane 13y ago
  Immerse 3d video is one of the original use-cases for VR tech and is pretty common. I remember seeing ads for headsets in Skymall of all places in the 90s. If anything, this is strong confirmation that the OR is not going to find a good home for the original use-case and FB is just turning it into a big media delivery channel. http://www.zeiss.com/cinemizer-oled/en_de/home.html http://www.zeiss.com/cinemizer-oled/en_de/home.html http://store.sony.com/wearable-hdtv-2d-3d-virtual-7.1-surround-sound-zid27-HMZT3W/cat-27-catid-3D-Personal-Viewer http://store.sony.com/wearable-hdtv-2d-3d-virtual-7.1-surrou... http://www.ebay.com/bhp/3d-virtual-video-glasses http://www.ebay.com/bhp/3d-virtual-video-glasses http://www.amazon.com/72-Inch-Virtual-Digital-Glasses-Multimidea/dp/B007PAUCKG http://www.amazon.com/72-Inch-Virtual-Digital-Glasses-Multim... (and dozens of other products)
rwmj 13y ago
This is an interesting Oculus app using 6 GoPro cameras to capture a vertical flight in a small drone copter of some sort: https://share.oculusvr.com/app/hiyoshi-jump https://share.oculusvr.com/app/hiyoshi-jump It's kind of interesting to "play" with. It's an absolutely massive download however because of all the captured video that is necessary to allow the user to look in any direction.
etiam 13y ago
With Oculus' now rather unsavoury connections I really hope documentaries like these will be made available in some format that's easily portable to other VR devices. As for the plans to support VR at all: Great. I hope this is going to work out well. I can't think of many recordings more deserving of immersive visual experience than those of Sir David Attenborough.
- loceng 13y ago
  Facebook is a controlled ecosystem and based on their previous behaviour they will try to maintain as much internally as possible - which will mean keeping as much media exclusive for Facebook as possible.
  - etiam 13y ago
    I agree. All the more reason then to try to release things like these documentaries in a more general format as well; alternatively just in the more general format with an adaptation layer to support the Rift. I'd hate to see vendor lock-in for gems like these, especially if it's a company like Facebook they're being locked in to.
fidotron 13y ago
Ignoring all the Oculus/FB stuff, what will be intriguing about this kind of thing is how the whole idea of editing to fit an existing narrative with time adapts to any sort of VR. For example, any ideas of transitions, or attempts to draw attention to one thing in a scene, use of zoom lenses and so on. Anyone that's spent more than a few weeks in the wilderness in one go knows it has a profound effect on your ability to spot something out of place very quickly indeed. The curious thing here is if you could recreate such a situation with VR, or if the attention span of the audience will drag you back to a situation of having to highlight everything for people not accustomed to that sort of scene.
tormeh 13y ago
Making View does something similar [0]. For the 2D 360 experience see [1]. There's lots of visual artifacts, but pretty awesome nonetheless. 0: http://www.makingview.com/making-viewer-vr-edition/ http://www.makingview.com/making-viewer-vr-edition/ 1: http://www.makingview.com/portfolio/wingsuit-flight-from-flo/ http://www.makingview.com/portfolio/wingsuit-flight-from-flo...
nathan_f77 13y ago
I am super excited about this! I also really want to see something like "Samsara" filmed for the Oculus Rift.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

His first documentaries gave me I life long passion for nature and animals. I hope they do it right.

I want to express my great respect to David Attenborough and love for his documentaries. They are absolutely incredible. For me, this is a killer content for Oculus Rift, even if they are owned by Facebook now.

aresant 13y ago

I subscribe to the r/oculus where this is the big thread and top comment is from the team behind idea and slightly debunks the claim while suggesting they'd like to kickstart it: Hey guys, I'm from Atlantic Productions and this whole article is about 60% correct. We're currently working with the rift and we're really excited by it. We've got a couple of things in development at the moment, maybe three things in fact. They're all potentially fantastic projects but as you all know it's quite a difficult thing right now to fund development of these things. We're considering putting out a kickstarter for a project but we'd only put it out there if we knew you guys were interested. So as a very simple show of hands kind of thing, if we were to make an immersive documentary, where you are in the scene, would you be interested in helping fund that in a kickstarter? Would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/22rqvu/next_attenborough_documentary_filmed_for_the_rift/ http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/22rqvu/next_attenbor...

johnbm 13y ago
Yeah, the only way this works is if it's in an immersive environment... either a virtual theatre, or a 3D scene. But you cannot play 3D movies on an Oculus Rift, the lack of head tracking on the camera causes instant motion sickness in my experience.

badsock 13y ago

There's something I don't understand: I've heard that one of the keys for avoiding VR motion sickness is having both rotational and positional head tracking. A naive interpretation would be that for that to be possible from a prerecording, you'd have to have a 360 degree recording from the perspective of each cubic millimeter whithin the given volume of space that you'd expect someone's head to move. Of course that's impossible, and there's certainly ways to interpolate from fewer viewpoints, but I've not heard of any that sounds like it's convincingly solved the problem. Is there one?

tizzdogg 13y ago
Without even considering positional head tracking, just the act of rotating your head moves the location of your eyeballs in space (our eyes are not the center of rotation of our head, our neck is). So I'm also doubtful that this will end up looking any better than a simple 3d QuickTime VR sphere.
- MrScruff 13y ago
  Having viewed one of these mono 360 clips on an Occulus I would say it's a significant step up from watching it on a monitor. However you're right that a truly compelling experience will require full 3D reconstruction of the environment so you can render both eyes in realtime with head tracking. That's probably feasible for some types of simple scenes but probably not a nature documentary.
beekays 13y ago
Regarding interpolation from fewer viewpoints, you might check out these demos if you haven't seen them. Requires Flash. http://lightfield.stanford.edu/lfs.html http://lightfield.stanford.edu/lfs.html I could certainly imagine a kind of 360 degree light field slideshow app with current technology. Not sure how much entertainment value is to be had there, though.
- badsock 13y ago
  Thanks for the link! That's just what I was looking for re: interpolation. Looking their acquisition rig, however, it seems like a choice between a large array of cameras, or one camera and a still image. It will be interesting to see if that can be made to work as video, with a large FOV, and interpolated movement on 3 axes. Seems like a big challenge.

conchy 13y ago

Attenborough has been pushing the envelope of new visual technologies for a LONG time. Bravo to him for keeping at it. I can't wait to see it.

shaneofalltrad 13y ago
I would like to see the Tokay Gecko again, but this time walking in front of me 3D, that would be awesome. So not just nature, but science in this form.

machbio 13y ago

After Bashing Facebook for acquiring Oculus Rift, finally there is something to show the hn people - thinking beyond the use cases previously thought will help bringing the technology closer to consumers. Oculus Rift use case of hardcore gaming is still alive and facebook acquiring is a good nothing so that people David and his team can invest time to bring their content Oculus Rift. Thanks David for showing us new uses for the Oculus Rift..

shaneofalltrad 13y ago
I still hope this will be cross device as most of the stuff. I can still see myself using Sony's product as well if they go this direction.
bane 13y ago
Immerse 3d video is one of the original use-cases for VR tech and is pretty common. I remember seeing ads for headsets in Skymall of all places in the 90s. If anything, this is strong confirmation that the OR is not going to find a good home for the original use-case and FB is just turning it into a big media delivery channel. http://www.zeiss.com/cinemizer-oled/en_de/home.html http://www.zeiss.com/cinemizer-oled/en_de/home.html http://store.sony.com/wearable-hdtv-2d-3d-virtual-7.1-surround-sound-zid27-HMZT3W/cat-27-catid-3D-Personal-Viewer http://store.sony.com/wearable-hdtv-2d-3d-virtual-7.1-surrou... http://www.ebay.com/bhp/3d-virtual-video-glasses http://www.ebay.com/bhp/3d-virtual-video-glasses http://www.amazon.com/72-Inch-Virtual-Digital-Glasses-Multimidea/dp/B007PAUCKG http://www.amazon.com/72-Inch-Virtual-Digital-Glasses-Multim... (and dozens of other products)

rwmj 13y ago

This is an interesting Oculus app using 6 GoPro cameras to capture a vertical flight in a small drone copter of some sort: https://share.oculusvr.com/app/hiyoshi-jump https://share.oculusvr.com/app/hiyoshi-jump It's kind of interesting to "play" with. It's an absolutely massive download however because of all the captured video that is necessary to allow the user to look in any direction.

etiam 13y ago

With Oculus' now rather unsavoury connections I really hope documentaries like these will be made available in some format that's easily portable to other VR devices. As for the plans to support VR at all: Great. I hope this is going to work out well. I can't think of many recordings more deserving of immersive visual experience than those of Sir David Attenborough.

loceng 13y ago
Facebook is a controlled ecosystem and based on their previous behaviour they will try to maintain as much internally as possible - which will mean keeping as much media exclusive for Facebook as possible.
- etiam 13y ago
  I agree. All the more reason then to try to release things like these documentaries in a more general format as well; alternatively just in the more general format with an adaptation layer to support the Rift. I'd hate to see vendor lock-in for gems like these, especially if it's a company like Facebook they're being locked in to.

fidotron 13y ago

Ignoring all the Oculus/FB stuff, what will be intriguing about this kind of thing is how the whole idea of editing to fit an existing narrative with time adapts to any sort of VR. For example, any ideas of transitions, or attempts to draw attention to one thing in a scene, use of zoom lenses and so on. Anyone that's spent more than a few weeks in the wilderness in one go knows it has a profound effect on your ability to spot something out of place very quickly indeed. The curious thing here is if you could recreate such a situation with VR, or if the attention span of the audience will drag you back to a situation of having to highlight everything for people not accustomed to that sort of scene.

tormeh 13y ago

Making View does something similar [0]. For the 2D 360 experience see [1]. There's lots of visual artifacts, but pretty awesome nonetheless. 0: http://www.makingview.com/making-viewer-vr-edition/ http://www.makingview.com/making-viewer-vr-edition/ 1: http://www.makingview.com/portfolio/wingsuit-flight-from-flo/ http://www.makingview.com/portfolio/wingsuit-flight-from-flo...

nathan_f77 13y ago

I am super excited about this! I also really want to see something like "Samsara" filmed for the Oculus Rift.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]