Virtual Hiking Experiment

After my last experiment with creating bidirectional 360 video, I decided I should create a virtual path of something that might actually be interesting to see.  Below you can take a walk down a mountain trail and take a look at the Fall colors.  Or if you prefer I also made it so you could run.  I really wish Youtube had a way in its javascript api to be able to tell which way you are looking.  That way I could just make you run or walk in whichever way you are currently looking instead of having separate buttons for each direction.  Eventually I will create an app in Unity that will allow you to use the virtual reality headset of you choice, then it will be easier to tie the direction you are looking to which way you move. Until then give my latest experiment a try: (just hold down the run and walk icons to go up or down the trail, drag on the video or use the circle controller to look around)

Bidirectional 360 Video And Why It Could Be Useful

What is bidirectional 360 video?

Bidirectional 360 video is video that can be played smoothly in either forward or backwards.  Due to how compression works for video, usually it cannot be played smoothly in reverse.

Why would bidirectional 360 video be useful?

Image that you create a 360 video while walking down a path.  If you could play it both forward and backwards, then you instantly have a little virtual reality path that you can walk back and forth in.  String a bunch of this bidirectional videos together and you could construct a whole virtual world you could walk around in.  Below is a little example of a single path.  Use the white arrows to walk back and forth.  The example will work best on the desktop, though it should work on mobile as well.

 Walk  back and forth  and look around and see if you can find the Tardis:

How to make bidirectional video:

You can make bidirectional with a few easy steps.  

• First take your video clip and reverse it.
• Concatenate the reversed clip with the original clip
• Then make a controller that knows where to jump to when you want to change directions

The logic for the controller is fairly simple.  because the first half of the video will going forward and the second half of the video is going backwards, whenever you want to change directions, you can simple do something like this:

var time = player.getDuration() - player.getCurrentTime();

player.seekTo(time,true);

This will jump to the exact place in the video that corresponds to going in the opposite direction of where you are currently in the video.

Converting 360 video into an explorable mini virtual world

Walkabout worlds have come a long way since I first showed some friends my first demos at the start of the year.  In general I have am pretty happy with the the state they are at (see here), but I found that while static photospheres were great for building a virtual world for something like a house, they did not quite capture what it was like to be at great outdoor location.  There wasn't the sounds or the movement of leaves and water that make you feel like you are there.

As I thought about it, I realized that it would only take a small tweak to make a Walkabout use a 360 video instead of a 360 panorama.  So I went and grabbed my new Ricoh Theta S, took some video, and ran it through the walkabout editor and 10 minutes later I had my first video based Walkabout.  Right now it only works on Google Chrome, but I am sure with a little tweaking I can get it working on IE and Firefox.  I have had other 360 videos work using WebGL on those other browsers, so I think I just need to use a different codec or something.
Also the video quality is not great.  The Theta S video quality is improved over the Theta M15 but it is still not pro level and the Theta doesn't let you play with color or ISO settings in video mode, so you will notice as you move around that the color changes quite a bit.

But still, as a test of concept, I really like these first results.  Check it out:

Click Here To Explore A Waterfall