Condition One is a visual technology company which today announced their next project: a stereoscopic 360 degree movie for the Oculus Rift called Zero Point. We’ve seen 360 degree video for the Oculus Rift, but Condition One claims to be the first to add 3D into the mix, something notably absent from other approaches to 360 degree recording.
The last time we caught up with Condition One the company was working on a standard way to shoot and embed 180 degree videos. We immediately wondered whether or not the Oculus Rift would make a suitable viewer for those videos.
Condition One, which was founded by noted photographer Danfung Dennis and funded by Mark Cuban, announced in a post on their blog in May that the company has since moved away from a B2B approach with their platform. Today, Condition One announced that they’re working on Zero Point, a stereoscopic 360 degree immersive movie optimized for the Oculus Rift. The company tells us that the film will run approximately 20 to 30 minutes and be digitally distributed. Pricing has not yet been announced.
Condition On say that they’re in production of Zero Point now and that the film will “follow the pioneers of virtual reality; the researchers and developers creating an entirely new digital dimension. From combat training simulations at the Department of Defense, to research labs at Stanford, to indie game developers and hackers, this immersive video experience will bring viewers into the future of virtual reality.” What better way to experience the birth of the consumer VR industry than to watch it in virtual reality!
“Recent advances in technology have set the stage for a massive upheaval and disruption—we believe virtual reality is poised to become the dominant medium for our generation,” Condition One wrote as part of the announcement.
Condition One says that they’ve built a 3D 360 degree video engine and that the software is “capable of projecting high resolution video at high frame rates into a full virtual sphere, with stereoscopic images and full head tracking.”
We’ve seen 360 degree video content for the Oculus Rift before from Making Viewer VR and Total Cinema 360 but Condition One says they’ve found a way to record live action video in 360 degrees and 3D, which will add an important layer of immersion to such videos.
Immersive virtual reality movies are something that I wrote about nearly two years ago, and I can’t wait to see how Condition One fares with this new and immersive form of storytelling.