OTOY at SIGGRAPH 2014 also announced the unveiling of holographic video. Marking a milestone in the future of media and entertainment (M&E), the company unveiled its holographic video pipeline for creative content creators, including the world’s first portable 360 degree holographic capture system and a cloud-based pipeline for creating and deploying holographic media to virtual reality and, in 2015, holographic light field displays.
The Oculus Rift Connection
The OTOY holographic pipeline has ending points that involve the now popular and much talked about Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets. Other end points include the forthcoming next-generation light field displays by developed by OTOY. OTOY will be bringing commercial freestanding volumetric holographic displays to market in 2015.
Holographic Light Field Rendering
So what is holographic video? It’s technically called holographic light field rendering. It produces stunningly realistic images that can looked at from any vantage point. Take a look at the video from OTOY below. (Safari users make sure Flash is loaded and up to date).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa7_zz5Vitg
Each frame of video accurately simulates every ray of light in a given scene or environment and every interaction that each light ray has with the surfaces and materials therein. Every reflection, refraction, and absorption of that field of light is modelled as it would be in the real world. The same caliber of incredibly accurate rendering is used in the special effects work of major motion pictures, typically taking hours if not days to render out one extremely polished and realistic frame for use in a movie.
OTOY demonstrated the same massive computational complexity delivered in hundredths of a second on the screen of one of the least powerful devices we use daily: a smartphone. The result is a video with true-to-life image quality that can be navigated and explored from any angle, otherwise known as holographic video.
“OTOY’s holographic video technology is part of the future of media and entertainment,” said Ari Emanuel, Co-CEO, William Morris Endeavor. “Studios have been using OTOY’s capture technology for years to produce exceptional special effects. Now studios can harness the same spectacular content for all new experiences and lines of revenue, letting audiences be a part of the action, explore sets, or go behind the scenes with the same assets they’ve already invested in.”
MORE: SIG: OTOY expands OctaneRender integration with NUKE, Houdini, MotionBuilder, Unreal Engine 4 and more
“Holographic entertainment has been a fantasy for many ever since they caught their first glimpse of the Holodeck in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s debut almost thirty years ago,” said Rod Roddenberry, CEO, Roddenberry Entertainment. “One of the reasons I invested in OTOY was to see that dream become a reality. While holographic displays of the kind we imagined aren’t here quite yet, virtual reality headsets give us an incredible opportunity to bring the Holodeck to life in a slightly different way. What Jules and the team at OTOY have built is essentially the software of the Holodeck: the media format that will let everyone experience an immersive, photorealistic world the way we’ve always hoped to.”
“For as long as I can remember I’ve dreamt of experiencing the Holodeck, of having a way to walk through life-like virtual worlds that seemingly transport us to anywhere we’d like to be. OTOY was created in part to realize that dream, and today we’ve taken a major step toward it with holographic video,” said Jules Urbach, Founder and CEO, OTOY. “OTOY’s breakthroughs in compression and rendering have dramatically reduced the barriers to holographic video, making it a viable media format that gives content creators everywhere a simple, cost-effective way to bring high quality, interactive 3D content to multiple platforms for the world to enjoy.”
To learn more about how to produce holographic video and the complete planned pipeline from OTOY, please read other reports here on Architosh. You can find additional information at OTOY’s website here.