After two attempts at selling its Light Field imaging technology to photographers—the poorly received Lytro and Illum cameras—Lytro is changing the target market for its innovative technology. This time, it's looking to reinvent virtual reality.
Not the way that consumers interact with VR environments, mind you—that's still going to be left to products like the Oculus Rift. The Lytro Immerge solution is targeted squarely at those creating the content—big-time production studios with deep pockets. And it's developing an entire workflow system to do so.
The Immerge system has two components for content acquisition. There's a camera—at this point we've only seen a conceptual rendering, but it's essentially a large sphere (bigger than a basketball) broken into several layers, mounted on a tripod. And there's a portable server, essentially a rack of computers on wheels, which is required to control the camera and also store recorded video—it can hold one hour.
The server has a touch-screen interface, designed to make professional cinematographers feel at home. It allows for control over camera functions via a panel interface, and even though the underlying capture technology differs from a cinema camera, the controls—ISO, shutter angle, focal length, and the like—remain the same.
Lytro touts several advantages to using its technology to record live-action virtual reality when compared with traditional stereoscopic cameras. Parallax adjustment is a big one—Light Field tech supports 6 degrees of parallax adjustment, replicating the perspective shift that you see when moving your head. It also allows the VR experience to be customized for different amounts of ocular separation—which can improve the experience for folks whose eye spacing deviates from the norm.
Editing tools are also important for pro users. Lytro isn't developing a full suite, instead it's going to deliver an editing solution that works with the industry-standard application for 3D work, Nuke.
Lytro plans to support the successful VR goggles that are already on the market for viewing content. These include the Oculus Rift, Sony PlayStation VR, Microsoft Hololens, and HTC Vive. A specialized online streaming server, also run by Lytro, will deliver the content to the end user. Of course, if content makers prefer, traditional stereoscopic VR can also be rendered and sent out to the masses.
The tech looks promising, but so did the original Lytro. The company states that its output will match the resolution of current goggles—up to 8K quality across two screens—but only time will tell. Professional content producers are often insensitive to price when it comes to renting or buying gear for a project, but tend not to skimp on quality. Even a poorly scripted thriller will use Zeiss or Leica cinema lenses and the latest and greatest cameras.
Details are nonexistent at this point, but Lytro does plan on offering the Immerge system for purchase and rental, and states that it will be quite flexible with rental components. Any component can be rented on its own, so you don't have to have the entire system on hand through pre-production, production, and post-production. It will also be making trained camera operators available as part of the rental package.