360 rumors

At WWDC 2017, Apple demonstrated augmented reality on the upcoming iOS 11 using existing iOS hardware. UPDATE :  Apple has announced 360 video editing in Final Cut Pro; Apple will support Steam VR and HTC Vive; Apple has announced Metal API for VR. 1. AUGMENTED REALITY At WWDC 2017, Apple announced several things including a new iPad Pro variant.  For readers of this site, the highlight was Apple's demonstration of augmented reality on an iPad and an iPhone on the new iOS 11.  Your iPhone or iPad would be like a 'window' that shows AR objects, similar to how Pokemon Go is played for example, except now your iPad or iPhone will be able to estimate the three dimensional surfaces within its view and place AR objects on it more realistically.  For Pokemon Go for example, Pikachu would not just be floating in space, but would appear to be standing on a sidewalk that you are pointing at.  A missed Pokeball would seem to hit the ground and roll off, following its conto...

Last week, I posted about Occipital Bridge, a VR and AR headset for the iPhone .  I got to try it at CES 2017.  Here are my impressions. Mobile VR headsets today are limited to tracking your head movement (rotational tracking).  Desktop VR headsets are able to track your forward, upward, or sideward movement (positional tracking) but they need external devices to track the headset's position. Occipital Bridge is a headset for the iPhone that uses Occipital's Structure depth-sensing camera as an inside-out tracking device, enabling positional tracking with 6 degrees of freedom, without any external devices. Moreover, Occipital Bridge uses the iPhone's camera plus an ultrawide converter and data from the Structure sensor to provide a 3D view of the viewer's surroundings.  This makes it possible to use as an AR device (strictly speaking, a mixed reality device). The Occipital Bridge was available for demo at CES.  Their appointment times filled up quickly but I was...

Occpital Bridge is a mobile VR headset for the iPhone with untethered roomscale positional tracking. Desktop VR systems have thus far been only for Windows (and Linux if you include OSVR).   However, Occipital is making a VR headset that can be used with an iPhone.  It's called Bridge, and it even has positional tracking with 6 degrees of freedom, just like the HTC Vive , Oculus Rift and Playstation VR .  Bridge also features a motion controller with rotational tracking (similar to the controller for Google Daydream ). Moreover, the headset has important features that are not present in the Vive, Rift and PSVR: First, the headset is untethered and has no external sensors.  This makes it possible to do VR without wires, without a PC, and theoretically without limits (world scale VR).  Second, the headset can do both VR as well as augmented reality (AR) or mixed reality.  Third, whereas the Vive and Rift warn users when they are approaching the boundary of t...

It appears you CAN stitch Samsung Gear 360 images on a Mac without 3rd party software after all. The Samsung Gear 360 (reviewed here) remains the most affordable 4k 360 video camera on the market at the moment.  However, it is compatible only with the latest flagship Samsung smartphones (S6 and above). Workarounds have been developed: - There's a modified Gear 360 Manager app that can run on some Android phones. - You can use an iPhone to trigger the Gear 360 remotely . - You can trigger the Gear 360 remotely with the dedicated Bluetooth shutter . - You can use the built-in self-timer. However, the Gear 360 does not stitch its photos or videos in-camera.  To stitch its images, you need the latest flagship Samsung smartphones or its included ActionDirector software (Windows only). Until now, the solution for stitching on a Mac was Autopano Video (299,00 € for the basic version).  However, it appears that you can use a Mac to stitch Samsung Gear 360 images by using Bootc...