By Daniel DiLallo
Special to YNOT
If you haven’t heard the buzz behind 180° or 360° cameras, monoscopic and stereoscopic and all the in-between, then you must be living in a cave still drawing pictures on a wall. There are too many cameras to keep up with! People don’t know what to choose or what is hot and what is not. Let me shed some light on this topic.
I am not a hardware guy. I am on the creative side but, as a director and content creator, we need to know what camera we want to roll with on a shoot. We also need to know what camera we want to live stream with.
Live Streaming
You all know the latest and greatest standard cameras. There are plenty to choose from there so I won’t even waste your time on that. (If you want to learn more, comment on this post and I can answer some questions below.)
Now, what if you want to get into VR or just want to get a little more immersive with a 180° or 360° camera? What do you choose?
The first question is do you want your content to be monoscopic (flat) or stereoscopic (with depth)? A lot of people in the adult industry have had some bad experiences with 3D. They’ve sunk a lot of money into 3D videos with little return because the 3D televisions and 3D monitors never took off.
Well, guess what – 3D is back, and it’s back in a big way! Almost all virtual reality headsets support 3D, and developers have a general idea of the eyes positioning necessary to make 3D look way better. Think 3D again — it is back.
Also, what do you choose: 180° degrees or 360°? Studies have shown 90 percent of people stay locked on the focus point and rarely branch out to the rest of a 360° scene, so 180° will work just fine for now. As people get more comfortable and want to explore more in VR and their surroundings however, 360° will widen the view demand.
Users are still getting used to expansive views and will demand more out of creators. You also can do really cool effects and make more interesting work this way. I have seen several pieces of content – say, orgies and Jacuzzi-type scenes — that are really cool in VR and make use of the 360° environment. I recommend Terpon if we stay on live streaming, 3D and 180.°
Degrees of Freedom (dof) Cameras
What are the most important developments in six dof cameras? Six dof adds a level of presence to a scene unlike anything we have experienced before, giving positioning possibilities to video. The user can literally move around and view angles of video, making them feel like they are in the video. It takes VR videos to a whole other level. For live cams especially, this will add a whole other dimension to the feeling of the user being close to you.
I love where this technology is going and will keep you posted as we develop more using six dof cameras. It’s still early here, with PC/post-intensive to deal with, but there are plugins on the way we have played with at CES this year.
Volumetric Cameras and their (Potential) Impact
If you were at the AVNs this year, then you most likely saw the long lines for our friends at CamasutraVR’s booth. If you got to experience what they were showing off, then you already know how their tech will affect the adult industry in many big ways: immortalizing celebrities and porn stars and entertainers, returning them to their youth and letting the next generation experience them in a new and fresh way, interacting with them like never before and creating the ultimate adult fantasy world.
These guys are on their way to creating the most advanced, immersive adult experience ever. Gamers and next-gen wave of adult content consumers will go crazy for their content, watch and see.
If you want to hear more about volumetric capture and would like me to go into details on how it is done and what it can be used for (on the business side or on the user side), please leave a comment and I will talk more in depth.
Next month, we will talk about AI and the mission three companies have to come together with one model, Reya Sunshine, making her doll come to life!
Daniel DiLallo is a former Activision game developer now known as an adult industry pioneer in VR and AR. He is the creative director for 3x Studios, which achieved prominence with its work on blockbuster games including Transformers, Guitar Hero and Spider Man. 3x Studios works exclusively with Vivid Entertainment toward the common goal of redefining what adult entertainment can be. To see their work, visit VividVirtual.com. DiLallo welcomes readers’ questions and may be reached at dan@3xstudios.com.
