WHAT DOES OWNING AN 11 LENS CAMERA BRING TO A MEDIA COMPANY?
Immersive Media is a technology company that has been around since 1994 when they began experimenting with digital 360-degree still images and video web graphics to draw the attention of governmental agencies to their impressive portfolio of 3-D imagery so they could sign these agencies up to use their high-tech video services to the field of security surveillence. Immersive Media also have many clients in the real estate and security markets but are now trying to branch out into the much more vast world of the internet starting with Google.
To get a demonstration of what their new 11-lens camera, the Dodeca 2360 can do to immerse yourself into their virtual world, you should click onto Google maps and then use the “street view” angle on blue-tinted maps that are specifically designed so you can see a street-level video image of the buildings and surrounding areas you are trying to get directions to. Currently, only big cities like Chicago and Los Angeles have the “street view” web graphic images in their maps of some of the main streets, but Immersive Media is attempting to photograph almost every large and medium city street in America over the next few years.
This new camera that can shoot in 360-degree directions does not come cheap. It’s $100,000 price tag prohibits most media companies from really investing heavily in the immersive video market. Government agencies so far have been the only purchasers of this web graphics technology, but Immersive Media is counting on these cameras to bring 3-D realism to many more internet sites than just Google in the near future.
GETTING NEW CUSTOMERS ON BOARD WITH IMMERSIVE’S NEW WEB GRAPHICS IDEAS
Immersive Media has been wanting to get more involved with the consumer marketplace since 1995, but it took the chief technology officer, David McCutchen, nearly 10 years to come up with his current plan that received the seal of approval with Google. His plan of strapping a Dodeca 2360 camera to the roof of a VW Beetle and taking hundreds of video shots of city intersections and local streets to combine with the high-tech web graphics of Google’s map pages in their main site area is proving to be a resounding success.
Immersive media has a small fleet of six cars it is currently using in America, along with three other VW Beetles that are taking pictures of city streets in Europe.
More than 125 million images have been shot for Google maps over the past few months, and that is just the start for this new technology to bring photo-realism to all aspects of the world wide web.
IMMERSIVE MEDIA WILL NOT BE STOPPED!
Entertainment and the advertising industry is the main focus the future success of Immersive Media as far as McCutchen is concerned. He wants to bring streaming video to set-top boxes so the viewer of a documentary on NASA’s next mission to Mars, for example, will be allowed to see a behind the scenes look at all of the high-tech equipment that NASA uses in their research labs while also watching the main parts of the NASA documentary.
At sporting events such as an NFL game, the 360-degree camera will allow the viewers to see exactly what is going on up in the nose-bleed sections of the stands and in the high-pressure coaching boxes where all the offensive coaches are sending down new plays that a quarterback like Tom Brady will be able to turn into a touchdown.
Yes, it is a very exciting cyber world that we currently live in, and Immersive Media is here to make the future happen today.
