Another intriguing use for virtual reality, one that has received scant attention until recently, is video. Imagine the possibilities of being able to swivel your head around within a movie, a news broadcast or a football game to see everything around a camera, not just what is in front.
These aren?t the static 360-degree images anyone can see on the Street View function of Google Maps, but rather live-action motion pictures, rendered in immersive 3-D on a virtual reality headset.
Silicon Valley is figuring out whether it can make this into more than a plot device in a science fiction novel. In April, a team of tech industry veterans from Flipboard, Google and other companies formed a new company called Jaunt that wants to bring what they call ?cinematic virtual reality? to life.
Shortly after the company was started, Jaunt raised about $7 million and now they?ve collected almost $28 million more. The company said the money will be used to develop a combination of hardware and software that they say will make their vision possible. Highland Capital Partners is the lead investor in the latest round of financing, with Google Ventures also contributing.
The company is creating a video camera that it says will capture a 360-degree field of view around it. When it?s done, the camera will be spherical, with around 30 lenses (a current prototype uses about 16) pointed in all directions. A microphone will create a 3-D audio effect, so that a voice behind the camera, for example, sounds like it?s coming from that direction when a viewer is wearing headphones.