70 Billion Pixels Budapest: 360 degree panorama image
"The observation tower of János-hegy [the Elizabeth Lookout on János Hill is], the highest vantage point of Budapest with a 360 degree panorama, was an obvious location. It also allowed us to take on previous world records in both the 'highest definition image' and the 'largest spherical panorama' category. When contacted, the Council of District XII informed us on the upcoming anniversary of the tower. We agreed to cooperate in commemorating the September 2010 event by setting up new world records-give them our best shot if you please. ."
(360systems Ltd., 360world.eu)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
360 Panoramic Video Capture and Recording
"You have probably seen several times in the past, those immersive digital photographs in which you can easily look up and down and turn your vision all around in full 360° glory. The 360° panoramic new year's eve of 2003 in Times Square, New York, has been one of my first memorable favorites, as it captures so well the thousands of emotions and different people celebrating on the street at once.
But video technology is now surpassing even these spectacular capabilities, by delivering navigable 3D, immersive video which as good or better than the 360° navigable images you and I have seen until now.
Check this video out. Once it starts rolling, click and move your mouse in different directions. You will be surprised to see that you can now fully navigate also inside moving video images.
The visual impact is really quite shocking, especially if, this is the very first time you are in front of a 3D, immersive and fully navigable video.
This spectacular feat is achieved by utilizing eleven video streams arranged according in a geodesic fashion. By doing so it is possible to capture an almost complete spherical image; a high-resolution 360 degree view of surroundings that is seamlessly stitched together.
Immersive navigable 3D movies can integrate GIS coordinates and other metadata to create highly informative, educational or life-saving emergency and assistance video guides.
The company behind this impressive new media technology is Immersive Media Corp., based in Calgary, Canada. The company also owns the wholly-owned subsidiary Immersive Media Company, based in Portland, Oregon.
The dodecahedron, with its twelve symmetrical pentagonal facets, is the most natural geometric division of a sphere for immersive image capture. It offers symmetrical, standardized divisions of the sphere that make the most of the image produced by each lens, and produces even resolution in every direction, better blending of the images, and more even illumination of the overall scene.
Perfectly equal and parallel faces, edges and corner angles, and divisions according to the Golden Ratio: A/B=(A+B)/A
It is the most natural geometric division of a sphere for immersive video image capture. It produces:
The enormous number of pixels recorded enables the highest image quality in every direction. The result is consistent image resolution across the entire spherical frame, with photographic realism and full motion.
Over 100 million pixels per second are recorded, resulting in spherical frames of 2400x1200 pixels, 30 frames per second. With the Telemmersion System, software is not required to correct sub-standard image resolution.
Images may be viewed spherically using the IMViewer software for looking around, or in an overall panoramic sphere movie format utilizing standard video playback platforms such as Windows Media® Player or QuickTime®."
(Edited by: Luigi Canali De Rossi)
CONTRIBUTOR
Suttana KeyuraphanSHARE
Virtual Recentring: Computer Games and Possible Worlds Theory
"When a reader follows the passage into a fictional world, the realm of possibilities is recentered around her. For the duration of her immersion, she accepts the sphere created by the narrator as the actual world in the same way that the interlocutor will try to imagine the other as an Inca and the children will take the bucket for a pie. For Ryan, this fictional recentering presupposes three modal systems and three actual worlds. The first is our native system with the actual world (actually actual world) at its center. Textual fiction provides a passage to a second universe with the world projected by the text at its center (textual actual world). The third, then, is the system to which the text refers , a system that contains everything projected by the text, but also everything that is not mentioned and is filled in by the reader (textual reference world). While in fiction the world described by the text is always different from the actual world (as opposed to non-fiction), it will generally be indistinguishable from the world to which it refers (the third system). Only when a narrator lies and this can be inferred, the reader will know that what is described by the text is not what the world it refers to is like. Since this is a marginal case and insignificant for this study, I will focus on two systems when dealing with recentering: the actual world on the one hand, and the textual world on the other. Moreover, I tend to take the poststructuralist stance that the actual world is equally a cultural construct. It should be seen as a representation conforming to the reader's image of the world, not as something that exists anywhere outside of representation. This perspective permits to install a symmetry between two representations: the representation of the actual world present in the head of the reader, and the representation of the textual world built from the text, and it explains why the reader can slip from one world into another so seamlessly."
(Jan Van Looy, August 2005)
Issue 12. Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative - ISSN 1780-678X
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality
"Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality is an overview of the pioneering artists and scientists who have brought about the dissolution of boundaries that have traditionally existed between the artistic and technological disciplines. The course surveys the work and ideas of artists who have explored new interactive and interdisciplinary forms, as well as engineers and mathematicians who have developed information technologies and influential scientific and philosophical ideologies that have influenced the arts. Seminal artistic movements and genres will be explored, such as: the Futurists, Bauhaus, kinetic sculpture, Happenings, video art, electronic theater, etc. It is a study of the invention of information technologies and new human-machine paradigms that have come to define the medium of the personal computer, including: cybernetics, augmented intelligence, hypertext, human-computer symbiosis, graphical user interface, etc.
This broad historical analysis helps illuminate an understanding of the emerging digital arts and its aesthetics, strategies, trends, and socio-cultural aspirations. Central to this analysis is an understanding of key concepts for the interpretation of evolving multimedia forms: including integration, interactivity, hypermedia, immersion, and narrativity. The course reveal hows these primary elements of contemporary media have roots in electronic and performance art prior to the digital era."
(Artmuseum_net)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Big Picture: Viewing From Within The Projection Space
Imperial War Museum North
The award-winning Big Picture is a 360 & audio-visual experience and a unique way for visitors to access the Museum?s world-renowned collections of photography, art and sound. Continually changing images are projected onto the gallery walls, floor and visitors themselves creating a total, ?immersive? environment. The images are accompanied by music, sounds and reminiscences from the oral history archives, to create unforgettable shows.
The Big Picture show at The Imperial War Museum North in Manchester is truly impressive. Audiences are treated to the show as they occupy the projection space: moving through the dissolving images as they pass from exhibit to exhibit.
CONTRIBUTOR
The Constellations ProjectSHARE
