Canon RF 5.2mm f/2.8L Dual Fisheye 3D VR Lens

[UncleBobsPhotography]

57 minutes ago, KnightsFan said:

But yes, renderings for VR make a lot more sense to me than a fixed-location image or video, I'd really rather just have a normal 3D screen for that, rather than have it "glued" to my head.

Rendered VR obviously has a lot more potential since it can be interactive, but one advantage of VR-video is the turn-around time. It should be possible to produce something decent in 1-2 days with VR-video, while rendered projects can get very expensive as soon as it's anything more than a walk-through of an existing 3D model or a 3D-scan.

57 minutes ago, kye said:

Interesting about rotation being an issue.  I've experienced a number of videos where the camera moved, and even went from being stationary to moving and back to stationary and those were mostly ok, although I have gotten the sensation of losing my balance on a few of those transitions.  Maybe the rotation has been implemented too jarringly?

I recal Walter Murch talking about how in the early days of cinema there was a debate about if you could edit film, because people don't teleport in real-life so perhaps couldn't handle a hard cut.  Similar questions were debated around the time that cars started going faster than a horse (and thus faster than any human had ever gone before) about what the limits of human capability are.
It turns out that cutting film is fine, and the mechanism Walter cited was that we teleport in dreams all the time, so it's not a foreign cognitive experience.

As someone who gets motion sick quite easily, I understand the source is a discrepancy between the motion perceived by the visual system and that perceived by the body (inner ear, and some other senses in the body too I think?) which is a sign that you've been poisoned and are now hallucinating, so the response is to reject whatever you ate/drank that is poisoning you.

Good points. There are so many things that can give you motion sickness in VR and I don't think we fully understand all of it yet, and at least don't have the solutions for all the problems. The more problems we are able to solve, the more we'll be able to do in VR before we get motion sickness.

I've done a couple of VR/3D projects with just 2 regular cameras (2xGH5 or 2xGoPro) and the editing process was a nauseating experience. A small alignment mistake in Premiere and I ended up feeling sick for the next 3 hours. My hope is that this Canon lens will make that a rarer occurrence...

[Django]

The tech itself isn't really anything "new". The last VR project my production unit worked on was around 2018 and we used an Insta360Pro which was already 8K/3D capable:

FWIW, we didn't actually use 8K or 3D as the project was very specific and balancing motion-sickness was already an issue as we were shooting 360. So many challenges and so little info at the time for what we were trying to accomplish (black mirrors bandersnatch type interactive survival game).  

Anyways, that was on a 1" sensor with limited manual control. Pretty cool to have this on a FF with log/raw etc. 

I've also read Canon offers a practical looking VR Utility, an essential component for stitching/syncing:

https://en.canon-cna.com/pro/professional-video-solutions/eos-vr-system/vr-utility-adobe-premiere-pro-plugin/

 

 

[BTM_Pix]

10 hours ago, Robo-T said:

Hi,  i recently bought one of these and am enjoying it so far.  I do find i get a lot of motion blur on the 8k likely because of the 30fps maximum?  is there anything else that could be causing that i should look into

I think Canon being Canon, they want you to buy the R5c to get the 8K60p.

 

[UncleBobsPhotography]

10 minutes ago, Django said:

The tech itself isn't really anything "new". The last VR project my production unit worked on was around 2018 and we used an Insta360Pro which was already 8K/3D capable:

It's far from new, but getting the performance to a satisfactory level is still something VR is struggling with. It's one of the few areas where hardware still makes a big difference.

1 minute ago, BTM_Pix said:

I think Canon being Canon, they want you to buy the R5c to get the 8K60p.

I'm just wondering how anyone will be able to play it back. Stuttering is not acceptable in VR, and I doubt there are many systems able to play back 8k60p with high refresh rate headtracking properly. However, with the de-fisheying of the VR lens, I guess it's not necessary to have the final delivery in 8k even though the initial recording is. A significant portion of the original recording is black anyway. Perhaps recording in 8k60p and delivering in 4k60p or 6k60p would be better.

[Django]

I'd think the no overheating of R5C in 8K would be the much bigger appeal over R5.

Then again IBIS could also be useful..

23 minutes ago, UncleBobsPhotography said:

It's far from new, but getting the performance to a satisfactory level is still something VR is struggling with. It's one of the few areas where hardware still makes a big difference.

software too.. Insta360 was horrible & buggy. Canon is usually pretty stable and they advertise a streamlined process/workflow yet with useful stuff like LUT support and a plug-in for Premiere.

[BTM_Pix]

51 minutes ago, Django said:

The tech itself isn't really anything "new".

Of course not but what has changed now, for me at least, is that its a commitment to the 180 3D format and that we are now seeing the affordable headsets to use it with.

360 definitely has its uses both as a format in its own right but also as a mechanism for capturing for flat content and I've had a few 360 cameras but 180 3D is more interesting and viable as a hybrid format for me.

With the Quest 2, I've had none of the nausea that I've experienced with my PSVR (aside from the ick of having to create a Facebook profile) and the head tracking makes viewing the 180 seem as "natural" as one is able to feel when one has a telly strapped to one's head.

And thats the thing with the 180 format, it has enough extra space to encourage small movements to the sides without that urge to be turning your head around like an owl to see whats behind you.

So whilst it still has enough "look around" space to be useful, it feels a lot less gimmicky and as a consequence the immersion feels stronger.

Something which is also helped with this setup by the minimum focus distance being so short as to be nearly non-existent.

180 is also much less challenging to shoot with of course as you can actually have people, lights and sound recordists behind the camera's view!

So, its absolutely not new as a technology but, for me at least, the opportunities for it as a viable mainstream medium are now that the quality of the camera and the headsets are intersecting.

 

 

[BTM_Pix]

27 minutes ago, UncleBobsPhotography said:

I'm just wondering how anyone will be able to play it back. Stuttering is not acceptable in VR, and I doubt there are many systems able to play back 8k60p with high refresh rate headtracking properly. However, with the de-fisheying of the VR lens, I guess it's not necessary to have the final delivery in 8k even though the initial recording is. A significant portion of the original recording is black anyway. Perhaps recording in 8k60p and delivering in 4k60p or 6k60p would be better.

The YouTube VR app on the Quest does seem less than ideal at the moment.

There does seem to be a plethora of other apps such as Skybox though that can stream the content that I'm going to look at as well as Virtual Desktop etc

 

[Django]

6 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

Of course not but what has changed now, for me at least, is that its a commitment to the 180 3D format and that we are now seeing the affordable headsets to use it with.

360 definitely has its uses both as a format in its own right but also as a mechanism for capturing for flat content and I've had a few 360 cameras but 180 3D is more interesting and viable as a hybrid format for me.

With the Quest 2, I've had none of the nausea that I've experienced with my PSVR (aside from the ick of having to create a Facebook profile) and the head tracking makes viewing the 180 seem as "natural" as one is able to feel when one has a telly strapped to one's head.

And thats the thing with the 180 format, it has enough extra space to encourage small movements to the sides without that urge to be turning your head around like an owl to see whats behind you.

So it feels a lot less gimmicky and as a consequence the immersion feels stronger.

Something which is also helped with this setup by the minimum focus distance being so short as to be nearly non-existent.

180 is also much less challenging to shoot with of course as you can actually have people, lights and sound recordists behind the camera's view!

So, its absolutely not new as a technology but, for me at least, the opportunities for it as a viable mainstream medium are now that the quality of the camera and the headsets are intersecting.

Oh I get it, we gave up on 360 in favor of 180 on a lot of scenes for the type of interactive narrative work we were doing. 

Good to hear the latest headsets improve motion sickness, but I'm sure its still a reality even in 180, depending on your own personal tolerance.

I imagine resolution and frame rate might also help mitigate the issue. 

As for streaming 8K60p that does sound like a huge bottleneck, downloading content would probably be the way to go.

[BTM_Pix]

21 minutes ago, Django said:

Good to hear the latest headsets improve motion sickness, but I'm sure its still a reality even in 180, depending on your own personal tolerance.

I posted that and then straight away watched a couple of videos of this combo where people have randomly wafted the camera round and now I'll have to have a lie down.

I think the rule of thumb for a while with this is to preview any content in a regular browser and make sure there is no wafting before putting the headset on !

 

[kye]

4 hours ago, UncleBobsPhotography said:

Good points. There are so many things that can give you motion sickness in VR and I don't think we fully understand all of it yet, and at least don't have the solutions for all the problems. The more problems we are able to solve, the more we'll be able to do in VR before we get motion sickness.

I've done a couple of VR/3D projects with just 2 regular cameras (2xGH5 or 2xGoPro) and the editing process was a nauseating experience. A small alignment mistake in Premiere and I ended up feeling sick for the next 3 hours. My hope is that this Canon lens will make that a rarer occurrence...

One thing that I read that apparently makes a huge difference is the inter-ocular distance (the distance between your eyes) as its critical for the angle of your eyes vs the depth of the thing you're looking at in the environment.  I bought a headset for my phone that allows this distance to be adjusted, but sadly many of the VR players that websites use for streaming content offer practically zero settings.  Mobile VR Station for iPhone has TONNES of adjustments, but the support to be able to stream content in it seems to be patchy and the ability to download files from many sites is blocked, presumably for copyright reasons, so you'll be stuck with whatever resolution your internet connection can provide at that exact moment.  

Also, the headset that I bought allows a focus adjustment (I'd assume it's similar to adjusting the focus of an EVF) and I've been able to get some great synergies between that adjustment and the distance of objects in the VR environment.  It's an odd thing because the alignment isn't something you can feel directly, but when it's aligned it feels more natural and realistic.  Of course, if you then look at something further away or something moves closer/further then you'd have to re-adjust that - kind of like pulling focus - so it's rather odd.  BUT, it does work, even with objects that can be very close to the VR camera.

The whole thing is rather sub-optimal.

1 hour ago, UncleBobsPhotography said:

I'm just wondering how anyone will be able to play it back. Stuttering is not acceptable in VR, and I doubt there are many systems able to play back 8k60p with high refresh rate headtracking properly.

I believe that one of the most important aspects is any delay between you moving your head and it adjusting the image - otherwise you begin to feel drunk / drugged pretty quickly.  Needless to say, that requires real graphics processing power.  I suspect that this will be where dedicated hardware will come in.  The latest processors seem to handle RAW 8K just fine so they've gotten much better in a hurry, so I'd imagine that we'll see decent performance from a range of products.

38 minutes ago, Django said:

As for streaming 8K60p that does sound like a huge bottleneck, downloading content would probably be the way to go.

Definitely.  I've tried a range of dedicated apps, Within is one example, that allow you to download the content so you can watch it in the highest quality.  

Do YT or the other VR streaming platforms offer an app that does this?  I can imagine we'll potentially find ourselves in a similar situation to the one we're in now for streaming, where there are multiple companies that control the content and you have to pay to get access to it.

Downloading the content and then decoding it into a much easier format for playing could be a way around the processing power required - decoding to an ALL-I file or something perhaps.

[dlfimage]

I have had this lens now for about 3 weeks, shot a few different types of scenes, and am really impressed with quality and over all ease of use. Canon's VR utility renders/converts the video and pictures much faster than I thought it would. Though some of you old guys (yeah I'm 51, bite me) are sounding like my grandfather did when TV's showed up on the scene...."nobody's gonna waste time with that thing" or "What kind of idiot just sits on the couch and looks into a box?".... well between Facebook (Meta), Microsoft, and Disney there are literally billions of dollar getting dumped into this format because it is clear to them, and me, that in the next 3-5 years damn near half the people you know will have some form of VR gear in their family or household. It really is incredible if you let yourself actually consider the ramifications. I took my first picture in a family party setting, a few days ago I took my Oculus over there to share those clips and pics and literally everyone was amazed to be "in" that party again, seeing everything exactly as it was like you're standing in that spot again. In fact my uncle, the oldest person there, was the one to point out how absolutely amazing it would be to be standing in his childhood home again, looking at his brothers and sisters and seeing it all again "like time traveling to the past" is what he said. I don't think many people are recognizing this aspect of VR yet, but it's going to be huge. I've already had my first wedding party request a VR shoot, I might make this the focus of my future photography business. 

 

[webrunner5]

Everybody looks stupid enough walking, looking down at their smartphones, running into walls and people, yeah walking around staring at 2 TV screens that ought to work out really well.

All this TV Internet crap is going to be the downfall of society. Nobody is going to ever leave their house. It Ain't good trust me. People have to intertwine with real people or it is a dead end in the long run.

[webrunner5]

You have kids now already that never leave their room when they get home from school. Poopsocking, pissing in a 2 liter bottle, how good is that for society down the road. We are already rotting at the core let alone add VR to everything.

 Old people are smarter than young people because we have witnessed the fall of society from the time of our youth. It is Not looking good boys and girls, and there is no going back now sad to say. Nobody really gives a shit about anybody anymore.

[BTM_Pix]

17 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Poopsocking

I had to google what that was.

The advantage of VR headsets though is they can do mixed reality so you can carry on playing your game whilst using the in built forward facing video camera overlay function to safely navigate to the toilet without having to compromise the integrity of any hosiery.

Even better, if you are playing some sort of Star Trek, game you can confirm the successful dispatch of the payload to the rest of the online players and stay in character by saying "Captain's Log".

 

 

[BenEricson]

On 3/8/2022 at 7:08 AM, webrunner5 said:

Old people are smarter than young people because we have witnessed the fall of society from the time of our youth. It is Not looking good boys and girls, and there is no going back now sad to say. Nobody really gives a shit about anybody anymore.

Prime, okay boomer opportunity. 

I do think that Covid made VR, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, do damn tired. The last thing I want to do is stare at another screen or “hop on a zoom call.” 

[webrunner5]

I think Zoom calls are here to stay sad to say. Just think of the money they save from having to rent all that floor space in a high-rise building. The genie is out of the bottle, no going back like I said. If a company can save money, they will.

[KnightsFan]

9 hours ago, BenEricson said:

Prime, okay boomer opportunity. 

I do think that Covid made VR, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, do damn tired. The last thing I want to do is stare at another screen or “hop on a zoom call.” 

I've been working remote since pre-pandemic. The question isn't whether I like hopping on a zoom call, it's whether I prefer it over commuting 50 minutes each way in rush hour traffic.

56 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

I think Zoom calls are here to stay sad to say. Just think of the money they save from having to rent all that floor space in a high-rise building. The genie is out of the bottle, no going back like I said. If a company can save money, they will.

Depends on who is doing the saving. The huge companies that own and rent out offices definitely don't like it. I much prefer working from my couch, 10 feet from my kitchen, than in an office!

[HurtinMinorKey]

I'm currently thinking about 4K 120fps, versus 8K60fps.  A lot of headsets can do 120, and the extra fluidity, especially in scenes with a lot of motion, can be a huge visual improvement--and yet I rarely see 120fps content available, but perhaps this gets at an even more general question: optimal data rates for delivery formats. 

Just looking at 4k 60fps (h265), I see massive improvements in quality between 30Mbps and 60Mbps and noticeable improvements all the way up to 200Mbps (depending on the scene). So I'm guessing that means in 8K 60fps you can get noticeable improvements going up as high as 400Mbps (i'm using a factor of 2 because with 4X the number of pixels compression artifacts are less visible generally), or if you want to make the codec more CPU friendly as high as 600Mbps (h264). 

Of course these upper end data rates will result in huge files, but I'm a big proponent of shorter, higher-quality videos, especially in the VR180 format where the magic of a scene only lasts so long. e.g., a 3 minute 8K file will be something like 9GB.  Huge, but manageable. 

Any thoughts on delivery formats and data rates from the crowd here?  I've got my Canon VR lens in hand, and am just waiting for the r5C to arrive. But I have a number of projects I'm starting to plan for.