Bullet-time rig made from 130 HTC One smartphones
To demonstrate the power of its Snapdragon processor, Qualcomm has set up a bullet-time rig made up of 130 HTC One smartphones.
- Webby Award honoree, 2x Gold Telly Award winner
To demonstrate the power of its Snapdragon processor, Qualcomm has set up a bullet-time rig made up of 130 HTC One smartphones.
Even though you may not know the technique by name, you most likely have seen the results of bullet-time photography. Popularised thanks to movies like The Matrix, a rig of cameras in a circular configuration are fired simultaneously, capturing the same shot of a subject from multiple angles.
There have been plenty of impressive examples of bullet-time photography before: from light painting to a DIY Polaroid rig and even a Land Rover ad for good measure.
What's special about the Qualcomm rig is that it consists of 130 HTC One smartphones that cover 540 degrees. The end result is an animated GIF that simulates movement around the subject in the centre of the rig.
The results are reasonably impressive, although we can't help but think it would have been useful to be able to set each phone's exposure manually, as the automatic exposures do shift quite a lot when the angle of light changes. See some of the results in the video below.