One of the drawbacks to virtual reality is motion sickness, and this is something that hardware developers have worked at trying to eliminate completely. So far we haven’t really heard many complaints of motion sickness, but there’s always room for improvement and this is something that Facebook thinks they can help with.
The company has recently announced that they are testing an algorithm that they claim will help to stabilize 360-degree videos. These videos are a feature of Facebook and when paired with a VR headset, lets users view content in virtual reality such as photos and videos. Now photos are static so it’s not really an issue, but videos move so as you can imagine, if not recorded properly in the first place, the end result can sometimes be a bit of a shaky mess.
According to Facebook, “This approach uses a new ‘deformed-rotation’ motion model that we designed specifically for 360 video, and a new hybrid 3D-2D technique for optimizing the model parameters in order to make shaky 360 videos incredibly smooth.” You can actually see what a big difference stabilization makes on Facebook’s website.
However it should be noted that there still needs to be quite a lot of work to do before the tech is available to everyone, but it’s good to know that Facebook is trying to do something about it, so do keep an eye out for it in the future. In the meantime videographers trying to capture 360-degrees might want to consider investing in some stabilization gear themselves.
Filed in . Read more about Facebook and Virtual Reality (VR).