Some friends are interested in watching movies in VR. This article mainly explains the misunderstanding of VR panoramic movies.
The misunderstanding of VR movies
Watching a VR movie is like entering the movie physically. The enemy in the movie points a gun at you, that is, a gun points at you. Some people think that VR movies are like this. The following figure vividly summarizes this idea: you live in the same world with your characters, you are on a par, and you can even touch the movie protagonist.
But the truth is cruel. VR movies do not store 3d data. In essence, it is still a combination of 2d images, but these images are very special. Therefore, there is not a gun pointing at you.
VR Movie Facts
We have all used the street view mode of Baidu Maps. If there is no difference between VR movies and Baidu Street View, will you be disappointed? In fact, the current VR movies only replace the flat computer screen with a virtual spherical screen and render it in the helmet.
So don't worry about the dog in the movie jumping out to bite you. You can clearly see that the surrounding area is just a slightly larger arc screen.
Principles of VR Movies
A common VR video shooting method is to use more than four cameras to take the front, rear, left, right, top and bottom images respectively and splice them together to generate a special 2d film, which is called VR film. If we export a single frame, it is called a 720 ° panoramic image. A standard panoramic image is shown in the following figure:
It is also very simple to use. You can directly assign it to the Sky Box of Unity, or create a ball, give an internal render shader, and then drag the picture onto it. Then give a camera at the center point so that it can rotate with 3 degrees of freedom. This is the rendering method of most VR videos. Of course, their maps are changed in real time.
Problems
The primary problem of VR panoramic video is the lack of clarity, followed by the lack of immersion. The reason for the lack of clarity is not only the poor video source, but also the maximum size of the material map. The immersion is not strong because the 2d sphere cannot simulate the 3d effect.
Alternatives
Games are different from panoramic videos. Most VR games are built from 3d models and 3d scenes, with excellent immersion and clear pictures. Users who care about special content may wish to search for vrkanojo on Steam. In this game, you can interact with characters from zero distance, and everything around you seems to be real.
