Google and GoPro dive into virtual-reality videos with Jump
Tech Industry
Jump enables any creator to capture the world in VR video.
Video that you can step inside of, and make it available to everyone.
It has three parts.
A camera rig with very specialized geometry.
An assembler, which turns raw footage into VR video.
And a player.
Let's start with the camera.
So the rigs that we built they include 16 camera modules mounted in a circular array.
You can actually use off the shelf cameras for this if you want, and you can make the array out of basically any material.
We made one out of 3-D printed plastic, one out of machine metal, and for good measure, of course, we also made one out of cardboard.
What's critical is the actual geometry.
And we spent a lot of time optimizing everything.
The size of the rig, the number and placement of the cameras.
their field of view.
Relative overlap.
Every last detail.
Now, what we want to do is share what we've learned with everyone.
So just like we did with Cardboard, we're going to be opening up the camera geometry with plans available to everyone this summer.
So anyone who's motivated will be able to build a Jump-ready camera.
And today, I'm excited to announce that GoPro plans to build and sell a Jump-ready 360 degree camera array [APPLAUSE].
And they're bringing their camera expertise to the Jump-ready rig, which will include shared camera settings Frame level synchronization and other features that will allow all 16 cameras to operate as one.
Next up is what we call the Assembler.
And this is where the Google magic really begins.
The Assembler takes 16 different video feeds and uses a combination of computational photography, computer vision and a whole lot of computers to recreate the scene.
as viewed from thousands of in-between view points everywhere along the circumference of the camera ring.
And we then use these in-between view points to synthesize the final imagery.
Stereoscopic VR video.
Now assembling footage like this takes thousands of computers And we wanna make this processing power broadly available.
So how are we gonna make it so anyone can experience it?
Starting this summer YouTube will support jump.
So if you wanna experience VR video, all you need is the YouTube app, your smart phone, and some cardboard.
