I have begun (unofficially) working on my thesis, and got a chance to tinker around with a piece of technology I had never heard of before: a 360 degree camera, or 360 camera for short. The one I am using is the Ricoh Theta S, which is a sleek, upright camera. It has two 180 degree lenses on its two opposite sides. These two capture two separate 180 degree images, and the driver that we install on the computer stitches them into one, large, panoramic, 360 degree image. The clarity on this image is better than I expected: I could examine a spot on my desk where someone had spilled something.
If you observe carefully, you'll see two distinct stitch lines; that's where the driver (Theta UVC Blender) comes into play. Note: On the far right, you can see the white spot I was talking about.
Now this has exciting applications. What I am using it right now for is Virtual Reality, or VR for short. This image looks stunning in a VR headset. There were some problems getting a stream set up from the Ricoh Theta S to a Google Cardboard (inexpensive yet high quality VR headset). I set up a server on my DigitalOcean droplet. On that I configured nginx (pronounced engine x) to use as an RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol) streaming service. But the problem with this was the lag. To put things in perspective, when I waved at the camera, it took 6 seconds for the viewer to see that I was waving. This would not work. The project I am working on requires the stream to be real time (Obviously, there will be some lag, but it needs to be reduced to a negligible value).
Finally, after days of research, I stumbled upon HugVR, a neat little website that lets you stream live from 360 cameras. To view this in VR, all I did was open the browser on the phone (the one used in the Cardboard), select the Google Cardboard view (this website has an option, just like YouTube), and view my stream in real time. The best part was the fact that the image was navigable. Earlier, when I set up the server myself, the image was a wide panorama, which was a little overwhelming. In the latter example, however, It is limited to 135 degrees (I think), and to view other parts of the image you have to turn your head, just like you would have to in real life.
To conclude this article, the combination of the Ricoh Theta S , the Google Cardboard, and HugVR works like a charm. I'm definitely going to be using this in my project and will explore more in the future.
If you observe carefully, you'll see two distinct stitch lines; that's where the driver (Theta UVC Blender) comes into play. Note: On the far right, you can see the white spot I was talking about.
Now this has exciting applications. What I am using it right now for is Virtual Reality, or VR for short. This image looks stunning in a VR headset. There were some problems getting a stream set up from the Ricoh Theta S to a Google Cardboard (inexpensive yet high quality VR headset). I set up a server on my DigitalOcean droplet. On that I configured nginx (pronounced engine x) to use as an RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol) streaming service. But the problem with this was the lag. To put things in perspective, when I waved at the camera, it took 6 seconds for the viewer to see that I was waving. This would not work. The project I am working on requires the stream to be real time (Obviously, there will be some lag, but it needs to be reduced to a negligible value).
Finally, after days of research, I stumbled upon HugVR, a neat little website that lets you stream live from 360 cameras. To view this in VR, all I did was open the browser on the phone (the one used in the Cardboard), select the Google Cardboard view (this website has an option, just like YouTube), and view my stream in real time. The best part was the fact that the image was navigable. Earlier, when I set up the server myself, the image was a wide panorama, which was a little overwhelming. In the latter example, however, It is limited to 135 degrees (I think), and to view other parts of the image you have to turn your head, just like you would have to in real life.
To conclude this article, the combination of the Ricoh Theta S , the Google Cardboard, and HugVR works like a charm. I'm definitely going to be using this in my project and will explore more in the future.
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