London Olympics to be filmed in 360 degrees

Interactive 360 degree video specialists yellowBird have reported strong growth in 2011 and have announced their intention to film the London Olympics and the World Cup with their real time interactive 360 degree production technology.

The award winning Netherlands based company made the headlines last year with a campaign they had produced for Doritos. YouTube viewers could watch a Professor Green music video from any angle they liked as the camera moved through a warehouse party.

YellowBird created the technology a while back which allows for complete camera control from a fixed x/y position (the camera can move along the x and y plane as a pre-recording) within a spherical shape. YellowBird's technology has been extended to include live full motion 360 degree broadcasting (Live), interactive 360 degree videos which includes 'hot spots' (Rich Media). If a viewer clicks a 'hot spot' additional information can be accessed such as a webpage or stats.

YellowBird have now set up production teams in London and Brazil  to cover the Olympics (which will be filmed in regular stereoscopic 3D by the OBS) and the World Cup in 360 degrees and updated their website to show the latest news and work. The team have also just announced a new iPhone/iPad component that will allow third party developers to use the yellowBird player engine for any new 360 degree video apps. The consumer app will soon be available for free download from the App store and will contain showreels and snippets of their latest work which people can view in gyroscopic 360. Click here to watch the iPad promo.

In the meantime the crews have been jet setting around the world shooting 360º video, including helicopter shots over Mont Blanc’s snow-capped peaks to Nike's 'Zuperfly', Louis Vuitton’s Paris show, Disney’s 'Lemonade Mouth' as well as an underwater shoot in Switzerland.

 UPDATE 

The spherical video technology used to record the Doritoslatenight.com content was a Spherevision system provided with production crew by Transmission TX Ltd. Their Spherevision system utilises a Labybug3 integrated camera head developed by Point Grey Research of Canada (more info).

The first integrated spherical video camera system to be developed into a professional portable system was the IMC Dodeca system, initially used in the UK to record London footage for Google Streetview by TX Immersive Ltd. This system was designed  and developed by the Immersive Media Corporation. Immersive Media (Founded in 1994) is now a brand owned by Immersive Ventures. TX have been the filming the progress of the 2012 Olympic Village from site demolition to completion with a vehicle mounted Spherevision system.   

Click here to watch yellowBird's latest showreel.
Click here to visit the Transmission TX website.
Specialist accessories built by TX were used to record the UK Professor Green spherical video and images from the location setups in all five countries can be found in the galleries on the Spherevision website.
Immersive Media website
Click here for the Immersive Ventures website.

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