Re:Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M
by rjth on Wednesday March 21, 2018 @08:05AM
(#16637271)
As someone who has been working with stereo 180 videos in VR for the past few months, this technology makes such a huge difference. While stereo photography looks broken from most angles, Google's lightfields demo just felt natural. Honestly, one of the best VR experiences I've tried in a while.
Re:Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M
by owenversteeg on Wednesday March 21, 2018 @09:58AM
(#16637999)
Huh, that'd certainly explain why Google wanted to pay $40MM for it. Thanks!
It's absolutely incredible and seems like really promising technology. Even with the relatively low resolution of current headsets, the image quality is amazing and you can see some slight lighting changes as you move your head, which makes it feel far more immersive than a static photo. There should be a lot of potential to use this for extremely realistic virtual tours.
Note: I had some slight issues with it "hitching" at the start of each scene in the guided tour (which made me feel a bit of motion-sickness), but that was probably because I didn't install it on an SSD (or my PC is just not quite fast enough overall). There weren't any issues when viewing the scenes individually afterwards.