Here’s a great way to spend your $20K Homeland Security check — the Elumens VisionStation. It can be used with applications for simulation and training, product presentation, entertainment and virtual tours.
The Elumens VisionStation allows for a fully immersive display of 160 . The VisionStation’s ultra-wide FOV creates an amazing sense of space and depth, without need for goggles or glasses. The large size of the VisionStation screen (1.5 meters) also helps promote an excellent sense of immersive 3D.
Put one of these jobbies in the chief’s office, a tourist spot or shopping mall.
The VisionStation is also available in larger models, the VisionDome3, VisionDome 4 and VisionDome 5.
For a live camera, I’d go with the iMove 3500, the first surveillance system with the ability to acquire, process and display 360 degree, immersive high resolution, digital imagery in real time.
Make your own 360 videos. On the cheap.
How about that Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1, HDTV still camera. The 8-Megapixel, widescreen shooter has Optical Image Stabilization and can record HD video ($700). The $550 Canon S80 point and shoot can record movies in XGA resolution (1024 x 768 pixels) at 15 frames per second.
Point it up into a Kaidan 360 One VR lens (right, $749.95) consisting of a lightweight and rugged optical system and EyeSee360 PhotoWarp software. The 360 One VR optic provides a complete 360 horizontal panorama with a 100 vertical field-of-view (50 above and 50 below the horizon).
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Sony’s HDR-HC1 HDV Camcorder ($1999) is the first High Definition (HDV) camcorder under $2,000. The HDR-HC1 features a single 4:3 aspect ratio CMOS chip and achieves a resolution nearly triple most MiniDV camcorders, recording some 656.1 lines of horizontal resolution and 480 lines of vertical resolution. Screw on a fisheye lens and you’re good to go.
Then hook it up to an X Box 360 ($299) for HDTV output. Hot damn!
Make a Panoramic EventCam with six, $500 Canon S80s with wide angle lenses. Breeze Systems’s RemoteCapture lets you control the cameras from a remote PC. Or automatically FTP to a Zoom Server like Social Canvas so multiple users can (virtually) zoom in on a small section of an 8 Meg image. Here a 360 degree panorama from the top of Mt Everest and a one Gig Panoscan.
IO2 Technology projects video images onto thin air. Viewers can walk around, or even through the floating image, the company said. Japan has started a development group to commercialize virtual reality television by 2020. VRTV will allow three-dimensional images to be viewed from any angle with a quality equivalent to that offered by high-definition TVs, in addition to letting viewers feel and smell objects.
Pano Tools has a Wiki and Yahoo Groups web site. Two commercial front-ends to PanoTools are PTAssembler (a great site with a very useful tutorial) and PTGui. Yahoo’s Panoramic Directory along with PanoGuide, Panoramas.dk, About.com and VR Magazine have more info.
DailyWireless has more on Open Source Pano Software, Panoramic EventCams, Wireless Still Photography, Wireless Photography, 360 Degree Surveillence, 360 Degree Video, 360 Degree Video Blogs, Wireless 360 Video, Maxtrix The City, Wireless Netcams, Multimedia Travel, Reality Now, Telepresence Now, and 3D Cities.
