Gonna make myself look really boring here and admit I only recently saw a 360° video for the first time a few weeks back (because I could finally play them after a browser update) :w00t:
Looks like fun, I understand all the excitement around it, and I'm pleased RL added it to iClone. Just one thing puzzles me though, how on earth are we supposed to play the damn things?

I know we can play them on YouTube etc, but what I mean is let's say I make a 360° video in iClone and render it out, I have the file sitting there on my Desktop so now I want to play it on my computer just like any other video file.  I honestly can't find anything that does, it's weird, even the mighty VLC won't play the things!

I'd have thought due to the polularity that just about every player out there would play them, but no, maybe I'm looking at the wrong sort of programs or something.
How do I play them? :crazy:

A good free desktop viewer is available from Kolor, it was called "Kolor Eyes" and has been updated and renamed to GoPro VR Player.

Gerry

---

System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

Hi Pumeco,

nice to have you back again in the Forum.
You can use GoPro VR Player (http://www.kolor.com/gopro-vr-player/download/).

Cheers

  Roberto

My PC:
OS: Windows 10 Pro English 64-bit / CPU: Intel i7-9700 3.6GHz / MB: ASUS ROG Strix Z390  RAM: 32GB DDR4 2.6GHz / HD: 2TB+3TB  /  SSD: 2x512GB Samsung 860 EVO + 1x2TB Samsung
VB: Palit GTX2080 TI GamingPro 11GB / AB: embedded in the MB and VB (audio from the MOTU M4 I/F) / DirectX: 12

Ahh... Gerry...  1 mins faster than my answer.
Pumeco now has 2x same link: he can't miss it :P

My PC:
OS: Windows 10 Pro English 64-bit / CPU: Intel i7-9700 3.6GHz / MB: ASUS ROG Strix Z390  RAM: 32GB DDR4 2.6GHz / HD: 2TB+3TB  /  SSD: 2x512GB Samsung 860 EVO + 1x2TB Samsung
VB: Palit GTX2080 TI GamingPro 11GB / AB: embedded in the MB and VB (audio from the MOTU M4 I/F) / DirectX: 12

Cheers Gerry and Roberto for the link, that's exactly what I need, it's even a nice clean purposeful program (no bloat) - great stuff :cool:
And thanks for the kind words, Roberto, my crazy guitar-playing Italian friend ;)

It's good to be back, definitely missed you all, even those I argue with (but don't tell anyone I said that) :P

I can see how these 360° videos would work really well for advertising iClone products, a sort of 'living ads' kinda thing.  To be honest I'm not really feeling the 'video' aspect of the format, I'm seeing it more as a sort of 'living stills' kinda thing so I suppose it fills a gap in the market.  Does feel a bit of a letdown in one repsect though, and that's audio.  Before I tried one of these, I assumed the sound would be panoramic as well, so that if something is in front of you, that's where the sound comes from, and when you rotate, the sound rotates with it.

I'm very surprised such a thing isn't a part of the format specification, and what a bummer, cause that would have put it on another level I think!
Still, fun stuff :D

To achieve 360 audio you would need to have a way to position sounds sources and render them real-time from wherever they come from. You can do that in a virtual environment (such as a game) but AFAIK there is no 360 audio format that can be combined with video such that it allows dynamic repositioning.

---

76% of original size (was 661x19) - Click to enlarge

Totally agree, thing is though, why didn't they do that?

Very strange, I mean it can't have been difficult to implement cause all they would have needed to do is take the rotation data from the user as they rotate the movie, then dynamically control the positioning of the sounds using that data.  I suppose real world recording setups would ideally need four mics to record the audio, but that's no biggie, they already sell 360 cameras now, so no reason a quad-mike setup couldn't be part of those gadgets as well.

It's a frustratingly dumb situation really, cause imagine you created a corridor with a huge fan buzzing-away on the right of the viewer.  It's gonna be 100% wrong the moment the user turns around and faces the other way.  The only way I can think of to avoid problems like that is to use two-channel mono.  All sound effects in mono (through both channels), but music and ambience in stereo.  I can't remember who it was, but I think it was either mtakerkart or JasonJBrown, pricked my interest over this stuff in a way the official promotions never did.  I remember one of them say that we're going to have to consider the end user more seriously cause as creators, we're now in the position to put the user in a more intense, realistic environment.

So I thought, yeah, that sounds bloody awesome, I'll scare my viewers to death with unexpected sounds of things creeping-up behind them etc!  Without 360 audio though, it's not possible to do such things as that, lol, that's such a shame cause I was looking forward to creating some creepy little environments and stuff like that.  I could still do the environments, but it's such a bummer the audio doesn't follow the rotation!

Well. It seems to exist.

Responding to pumeco:

Well, yes, but where would the sound come from? (Speaking of iClone, obviously.) For example, I don't rely on the audio in iClone other then for lip-synching, and currently there is no mechanism where the sound attached to a prop or an avatar is placed in space.  But even that wouldn't even be enough; each sound would need its own channel that is then dynamically combined in a kind of surround mix. It is an interesting problem and it would be cool, but I don't believe it's simple to solve for recorded media.

But I agree, it would do more to immersion than stereoscopic VR as someone requested the other day.

A long time ago there was something called VRML (VR markup language), which was aimed at creating a 3D environment you could move through with any sound emitters being adjust as you traversed the environment. It was very crude, and the home PC wasn't really powerful enough, but it was compelling. VRML is obsolete, but apparently people are looking at modern equivalents. See for example here: http://www.web3d.org/event/w3c-workshop-web-and-virtual-reality. So what you want may actually be around the corner.

---

76% of original size (was 661x19) - Click to enlarge