

For true panoramic images, toss this camera in the air - Tzunamitom
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57611859-76/for-true-panoramic-images-toss-this-camera-in-the-air-seriously/

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deletes
It's a camera you throw in the air and it takes a panoramic picture of the
surrounding area.

The actual Indiegogo site: [http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/panono-
panoramic-ball-came...](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/panono-panoramic-
ball-camera)

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evan_
I don't think it's 3D, it's just a panoramic image you can scroll around.

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gngeal
Why not 3D, in fact, if it had accelerometers and gyroscopes? Just throw it at
around 45 degrees of elevation, capture photos during flight at a few fps, and
post-process the results for a 3D scene reconstruction. (You'd have to design
it much more durable for that mode of operation, of course.)

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GrantS
This is a nice idea -- the biggest practical problem would be motion blur
while the cameras are in flight. If thrown straight up, there's a moment of
zero motion at the top that mitigates that problem, but it's still an issue
the rest of the time -- fast shutter speed helps but rolling shutter
complicates it. Note that you could still get plenty of parallax for 3D from
throwing straight up, just not right above and below the camera path, so that
minimizes the durability problem from landing on the ground. It also provides
a nice prior estimate (and additional constraints) on camera poses for
structure from motion as the ball has to obey gravity.

Edit: On the indiegogo page they specify throwing is mostly for outdoor use:
"While throwing works great outdoors during daylight, you can also use the
camera indoors or in the dark when mounted on a stick or handheld." This would
be due to the motion-blur/shutter-speed/sufficient-light problem.

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dotBen
This isn't really a new idea - the military already have versions of these
that they can throw into a room or inclosed space to gain optics on it upon
before entering it to clear it. They also have versions that can be launched
over a longer distance via grenade launcher.

eg
[http://www.epicos.com/epicos/extended/switzerland/macroswiss...](http://www.epicos.com/epicos/extended/switzerland/macroswiss/products_mq.htm)

see also from 2008: [http://www.gizmag.com/the-i-ball-short-range-throwing-
camera...](http://www.gizmag.com/the-i-ball-short-range-throwing-
camera/10399/)

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Fuzzwah
I dream of a weighted version of this which I can use while skydiving.

IE: like a spaceball
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRUoe1nPxOE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRUoe1nPxOE)

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vanni
Original website from 2011:
[http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera](http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera)

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ChuckMcM
I thought I had seen it before. So it was patent pending in 2011, guess it
takes a while in Germany too.

One of the downsides of the new Kickstarter/Indiegogo etc world is I keep
seeing article on new "products" which don't exist yet. Interesting that the
time to print time has shortened and now come inside the 'time to produce'
margin. I think we need some backup words for these things, like "Possibly a
new camera that can take panoramas"

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svantana
Well to be fair, the camera exists, you just can't buy it yet. But perhaps it
would be good to have some way of differentiating headlines about buyable
products from prototypes/research projects etc.

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micampe
A similar project, that also supports live video
[http://bublcam.com](http://bublcam.com)

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jebus989
It's a very cool product but panoramas still look awkward and awful to me.

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sp332
Is it the really curvy bits at the bottom that bother you? You can fix it by
using a different projection when rendering the spherical image to a flat
surface.

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jebus989
Yeah in general the warping and disconnect from our normal perceptions; I'd
rather just see a wide-shot landscape than something distorted and alien.

But I take your point, I have seen some that have been well-corrected and look
pretty normal so I believe that it's doable.

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sp332
The trouble is that the parts toward the bottom of the photo should really be
beneath you! So you need an infinitely tall photo, or a screen that wraps
around below your feet :)

