VR from a different perspective

Lytro Cinema from Lytro on Vimeo.

The future of cinema is here as seen by the new Lytro Cinema Camera, a 755mb/40K recording beast that will eliminate the green screen as we know it due to it's ability to capture 3D data in realtime with their Light Field imaging system. (Using ray tracing, in part, to capture and manipulate the data in 3D space.)  

Things like changing the depth of field, focus position, shutter speed or dynamic range can now take place after the fact thanks to the truly dynamic data being captured. Lytro believes that this tech is going to make the merger of CGI images and real-world footage even more seamless, and I believe it too.

A hefty portion of films today rely heavily on green screen technology to turn studio backlot environments into magical worlds. Lytro Cinema is implementing light field technology to create something called a “depth screen,” which allows filmmakers to capture green screen shots without actually having to place actors in green screen environments.

Because light field technology senses depth so accurately, the Lytro Cinema camera can just capture the world out to a certain distance and is essentially able to leave the rest of the shot transparent, allowing for post-production wizardry to seamlessly put an actor on the surface of the moon when they’re actually standing in a room surrounded by camera equipment.

Obviously this tech is beta, ridiculously expensive with storage requirements beyond the kin of man but 10 years from now, this approach to doing immersive video will be commonplace if tech continues to accelerate at the same rate it has  for the past 30 years. (I'm betting it does.) The video's just a taste of what's coming so enjoy this beta from a company that has something truly special in the way of capturing image data in ways never been done before.

Addendum: Here's a quick take on how CG (Computer Graphics) will integrate with this tech. Interesting to say the least.

Rather than render out a CGI background to convert it into a 2D backdrop, Lytro has written drivers and plugins for many of the well known CGI applications, that allows them to output into the Light Field domain. All the information is there in the CGI programs to do this. Once everything - live action and CGI backgrounds - is in the same conceptual space, the magic can start. CGI artists will have as much control over the Light Field domain Live Action as they do over their CGI models. Which means they can manipulate and blend them perfectly. As a bonus, because of the maximum 300fps frame rate of the Lytro Cinema Camera, it’s possible to derive any lower frame rate from the master recording - even ramping up and down on demand.

It’s hard to even begin to imagine what this will lead to in the future.