Fish-eye video playback

[Trekimann]

I have an action camera with a 170degree FOV and obviously on a flat screen that means lots of bending at the edges, I am hoping the 360 video viewer will mean that I can play back that video in a spherical screen. I know it will mean lower effective resolution around the edges but it would still be a great way to watch back footage from a camera like a GoPro which has a wide angle lens. I was wondering if the built in video player will support that.

[Grey Acumen]

It probably will. The video player in 0.9.4 can already handle dome and sphere videos. Since you only mentioned a single camera, I'd have to assume that you don't have an actual stereoscopic 3d option via SideBySide or OverUnder dual videos, so for the Video mode, you'd choose standard, and then for Video Projection, you'd choose Dome. That's 180, instead of 170, so you'd probably still get some distortion, but not nearly as much as what you're currently getting.

[Trekimann]

Thanks :) An option to select the angle would be awesome and add more functionality to the program. The other thought I had was to use a regular video player and set the FOV of the screen to 170 and adjust the distance until it was comfortable.

[Grey Acumen]

If you're using fisheye, then you'll probably also have distortion along the top and bottom, which the dome player would also help address. The panel viewing would work if all you need to address is the sides.

[[HPE]Pyronious]

Loving Virutual Desktop so far. Thanks for the great application!

I'd like to add my vote for Fisheye projection support. This is becoming a very common format for SBS 180 degree content. An example of the Fisheye format can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFLWZ0YEbZA

As a comparable, the Whirligig player has a mode specifically for this fomat called Fisheye SBS.

When viewing Fisheye SBS in Virtual Desktop, strong pinching distortions occur at the zenith and nadir of the dome. Would love to see a new projection to support this format. Thanks!

[ggodin]

Thanks for the sample, I'll this to my list.

[Trekimann]

I found that using my Sony x1000-v on 4k then playing it back using virtual desktop worked quite well when set to sphere. I would like there to be an option to select a projection type (dome or sphere) and the fov of the video both horizontally and vertically. that way it can be tailored to anyone’s camera to produce just the right amount of wrap around.

[[HPE]Pyronious]

@Trekimann, Fisheye is a dome (180 degree) format, not a sphere (360 degree). So if you look again carefully you will find 2 problems with viewing the YouTube video I linked in Sphere mode:

1. Everybody is stretched twice as wide as they are in real life.
2. If you look directly behind you, you will see a huge seam in the panorama.