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The world has changed, and undoubtedly we have to change with it. 2020 was a year that none of us will ever forget. For better or worse, it taught us some valuable lessons at a great cost. Due to the pandemic, businesses have to shift the way in which they conduct their operations. At Capion, we have been working within the education sector since our founding. So it was no surprise when our partners turned to us to solve some of their recruitment issues with technology. Our partners needed to limit their in person, Open House attendee scheduling to accommodate for Covid restrictions. There was also some perceived hesitancy in regards to parents & children actually showing up to tour a school during the pandemic. Naturally, our partners asked us some questions about creating some basic promotional content to blast out in an email campaign. This is where we lent our expertise in technology with some creative, out of the box thinking.
I’ve always been an early adopter of technology, and while I might not adopt everything at the onset, I do tend to keep an eye on emerging tech. 360 Virtual Content has been one of those technologies that have been sitting on my “back burner” if you will, biding it’s time for the proper application. When our partners in the school system came to us, and started talking about ways to create a virtual open house, 360 virtual content immediately sprung to mind. For those that are unaware, 360 cameras are a pretty basic concept. This technology employs multiple cameras, and lenses converging their field of view to capture 360 degrees, as the name implies. That content is then stitched together either in camera at the point of capture, or in post production software. The editor can then select a point of interest for the viewer to start off with, and the end user can quite literally rotate their view with either their mouse, or by utilize the inertia from the accelerometers in their cell phones to look in another direction.
EXAMPLES:
Imagine for a moment capturing every viewable angle from a single point source, and then giving that power of choice to your end user. That is the technological power of 360 virtual content, and to be quite frank… that’s merely scratching the surface of the technology. Every time you watch the content, it can be a new user experience based on your selected point of view. So when we pitched this technology to our partners, they were thrilled with the prospect, as well as reserved to see it’s practical application. Whenever you introduce a new piece of technology like this to a partner, you have to take into consideration the hiccups of the end user. Thankfully, with the implementation of 360 photos & video on platforms like Facebook or Youtube, users have become rather savvy to how operate this type of content.
EXAMPLES: Over-Capture & 2D Output
In the early days of 360 video, the application of it’s use was rather clunky. Flash forward a few years, and the technology has finally come of age. The tech has evolved so fast, that you can now even live broadcast 360 content to your respective outlets, empowering the end user to be able to “pan & scan” directly inside their app of choice as the broadcast is being transmitted. So we built some “Open House” video tools for our partners in a rather linear fashion, similar to how they might conduct the tour themselves. Of course, as originally alluded, this is a very simple execution of what this technology can really do. To give an examples; due to the fact that the camera can also capture high resolution photos, with this technology you can actually reconstruct an entire environment in three dimensional space, with your photos serving as a map or textured skin. Then in post production, we can build a wire frame to place our 360 photos over. At this point, we are quite literally building a “doll house” virtual construction of your environment. This is just one of the many forms of media we can use to apply this technology to. With the prospect of over capturing our environments, we can even utilize this technology to simply capture multiple angles, select our viewing point in post production, virtually pan & scan as the editor, and then output the 360 content as a normal 2D video. Then it would seem as if the camera is moving fluidly, as if the camera operator was moving the camera to a certain point of view, when in fact the camera never moved, and those choices are being made in post production, after the fact.
EXAMPLE: Doll House - Credit MetaReal
So as a business trying to increase their recruitment efforts, or selling a service, product, or brand you can utilize 360 virtual content in ways that were previously unattainable. For instance you could;
Create a virtual open house for admissions and enrollment purposes
Reconstruct your home, office, or facility is virtual space
Live broadcast in 360 enabling the end user to pan & scan in the moment
Over capture your content for a 2D output, empowering the editor
Capture and reconstruct a product, or device in three dimensions
These are just a few of the ways you can leverage 360 virtual content with your business. The technology is rapidly developing and evolving each day. So give our examples a watch, and if you would like to harness the power of 360 virtual content, please reach out to us today by visiting our main page at www.capionstudio.com today. Until the next article, take care and stay creative!