Sony's giant motion-sensing dome will make you want to watch 360 video
Three-sixty videos are okay but you know what's makes them way way better? Watching them on a giant motion-sensing dome. Seriously.
After trying out Sony's "Immersive Space Entertainment" concept I can safely say that watching 360-videos on a giant projection dome in a motion-sensing chair is by far the coolest way to watch spherical video.
Sony was demoing the tech at its "Wow Factory" exhibition at SXSW this week alongside a load of other wacky and weird tech from its research labs. But the projection dome thing (it's so experimental Sony apparently doesn't yet have an actual name for it yet) was by far my favorite of all the demos.
The dome uses two 4k projectors. The two projections are "blended," according to the Sony rep I talked to, so you can't discern where one starts and the other begins. In any case, if there was any noticeable point where the two projections overlapped, I couldn't see it.
But the most impressive part is how you "steer" the 360-video: by swiveling around in the chair. The accompanying chair is equipped with motion sensors so that as you turn the video shifts to correspond to your movements.
While maybe not as immersive as viewing 360-videos in a VR headset, there's something undeniably cool about watching a huge 4k projection that responds to your movements. It also eliminates the issue of motion sickness which is a huge problem for some (myself included) when using a VR headset.
The dome's utility isn't limited to 360-degree videos either. Aside from the videos, the company showed off a "cyber gym" concept where the dome was paired to a stationary bicycle. Like the chair, the bike was equipped with motion sensors. As you pedaled, you would lean in different directions to try and "steer" toward onscreen targets.
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They also had the dome set up to act as music visualizer which was the least impressive of its uses but still more rad than most music visualizers.
Of course, none of this is in any way practical (and the whole setup is probably expensive af) but this only a concept, after all, so it may never make it out of Sony's research labs anyway. A girl can dream though, right?
Topics SXSW
Karissa was Mashable's Senior Tech Reporter, and is based in San Francisco. She covers social media platforms, Silicon Valley, and the many ways technology is changing our lives. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Macworld, Popular Mechanics, and The Wirecutter. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding and watching too many cat videos on Instagram. Follow her on Twitter @karissabe.
