360video  technology

 
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IT is one of the most exciting developments in digital photography and it's being made right here in WA.

Called 360 degree video or virtual video, it is an interactive moving film version of the virtual tour commonly used on tourism or real estate websites.

Instead of seeing just what the camera "sees", users can scroll up, down, left or right to see what they want to see in a particular scene.

Unlike its predecessor, virtual video uses sophisticated custom-designed technology to give viewers the sense they are actually walking or flying through a location.

Bunbury photographer John Copeland has been making virtual videos for the past three years but has only recently been able to share his work thanks to the rest of the world catching up.

Mr Copeland also recently shot a virtual video of the Margaret River bushfires which destroyed more than 40 properties last month.

"Virtual video's only really been available online in the last six months because of internet speeds, although we have been able to do it probably over the last two to three years," Mr Copeland said.

"There was no way of showing it online before that. We were just sort of waiting for the right time to spring it online."

Mr Copeland said he started playing around with video technology several years ago while he was working in the UK but stopped when he realised "the internet was holding" him back.

Internet speeds, he explained, were not fast enough to accommodate the technology used to show the 360 degree videos.
Then a few years ago, after he had returned to WA, he began exploring it again and began designing the specialised equipment and software needed to create these interactive "tours".

Now three years on, Pixelcase, his company, which also has offices in England and Canada, is in high demand following the success of their first 360 video of Nimmo Bay resort in Vancouver which clocked up more than 25 million hits.

"Things just kind of snowballed from there. The interest has been pretty great," Mr Copeland said.

His company, which is one of only a handful that is capable of producing the virtual videos, have also filmed projects in London, Paris, Madrid, New York as well as every Australian state and recently just completed the Official Virtual tour of Eiffel Tower.

by Emily Moulton   heraldsun.com.au

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