PresenZ is a professional-grade device for changing cinema-quality CGI content material for 6DOF viewing in VR. With the just lately up to date Immersix app for PC VR headsets, you may demo the tech with a recent batch of newly launched content material. A streaming model made for Quest can be in improvement. We go to take a look at each variations first hand. The creators of the tech hope to provide world-class CGI studios like Pixar and DreamWorks a streamlined strategy to make cinema-quality CGI content material available to a VR viewers.
So let’s get the straightforward half out of the best way.
Immersix is a platform for taking part in again CGI content material that’s been transformed into volumetric video utilizing the Presenz expertise, which implies it helps snug and immersive 6DOF viewing. The app was just lately up to date with new content material: ‘Weightless’, a free-to-view music video with cosmic visuals; and ‘Sharkarma: Guardian of the Oceans (Half 1)’, a $4 in-app buy that “places you on the middle of an underwater survival thriller.”
Now let’s discuss concerning the extra sophisticated half: what’s the tech behind this and why does it matter?
First, volumetric video (which means any immersive video content material supporting 6DOF) is inherently extra snug and immersive than the same old stereoscopic 180 or 360 video. That’s as a result of 180 and 360 video solely responds if you rotate your head, however not if you translate your head (ie: transfer your head via area). However, volumetric video permits for each rotation and translation inside the content material, which makes it really feel significantly extra immersive.
Second, there’s some content material that’s so visually detailed that it merely can’t be rendered in real-time, even on a high-end PC. Should you consider your favourite Pixar film, it seems to be so good as a result of every body takes ages to render. As a result of it’s not ‘real-time rendering’ like a videogame, it’s sometimes known as ‘pre-rendered’. Pre-rendering provides computer systems time to do issues like extremely detailed ray-tracing, supersampling, and plenty of render passes to reinforce the look of every body.
Presenz exists as a strategy to convert CGI content material right into a pre-rendered format which could be seen on VR headsets whereas preserving the consolation and immersion of volumetric video.
I obtained to take a look at the most recent iteration of the tech and was impressed to search out that it certainly delivers on this promise. The volumetric content material served up via Immersix actually is correct 6DOF and it’s positively extra snug and extra immersive than the identical content material in 180 or 360 video.
Right here’s the caveat although: the content material that’s at present obtainable in Immersix is, arguably, higher wanting than what could possibly be rendered in real-time on a suitably high-end PC. Nevertheless it’s not clearly higher. Nevertheless, that is primarily a limitation of the at present obtainable content material, not the tech.
As a tech demo, Immersix is thrilling, however what it actually must shine is actually top-tier CGI content material—the type of stuff you see from main studios that launch blockbuster CGI movies.
I do know for sure that the present high quality stage isn’t a limitation of the tech as a result of I’ve seen unreleased content material, transformed with the Presenz tech, that really felt like stepping right into a Pixar or DreamWorks film.
Presenz exists with the objective of changing into a streamlined pipeline for getting that type of top-tier CGI content material from main studios into VR headsets. However that content material isn’t there simply but.
Going Deeper
Give your reminiscence some critical props if Presenz sounds acquainted… certainly we first wrote concerning the tech manner again in 2016. Between then and now, it’s been a bumpy experience.
Initially owned by an organization known as Nozon, the Presenz tech was offered to developer and writer Starbreeze in late 2016.
However when Starbreeze almost went bankrupt in late 2018, Presenz was spun out as an unbiased entity. From there Presenz was ultimately picked up by V-Nova, an organization specializing in video compression.
Based on Presenz creator Tristan Salomé—who continues to be heading the undertaking in spite of everything these years—the partnership with V-Nova solves a vital problem the tech has lengthy confronted: giant file sizes.
As you may think about, cinema-quality CGI can take up a variety of area. Now add all the extra information wanted to compute 6DOF views… and you’ll shortly find yourself with tens or tons of of gigabytes for comparatively short-form content material.
V-Nova says that since its acquisition of Presenz the corporate has labored to refine the tech to make it extra sensible for main studios and customers alike. As they put it, they’ve taken it from a ‘tech demo’ to a ‘actual device’.
On the studio facet, V-Nova says it has constructed Presenz plugins for the rendering instruments utilized by main CGI studios, like Pixar and DreamWorks, which permits a streamlined conversion of current CGI into volumetric video. The concept is that these studios already spend a lot of money and time making prime quality CGI belongings and content material; if they’d a strategy to simply convert that content material into volumetric video, they may faucet into an viewers of hundreds of thousands of VR headsets as a brand new distribution platform.
On the patron facet, the enhancements in compression have enabled the creation of the Immersix app which supplies PC VR customers a strategy to view Presenz content material for the primary time.
However even after compression and efficiency optimizations, Immersix nonetheless requires the facility of a PC for playback.
Nevertheless, V-Nova understands that accessibility is every part in terms of video distribution. To that finish, the corporate can be constructing a cloud-rendered model of the Immersix app for standalone headsets like Quest.
This cloud-rendered model is already in improvement and I obtained to see an early demo operating on a Quest 3. What I noticed seemed and felt similar to the desktop model, besides it was being rendered within the cloud and beamed all the way down to my Quest headset. This, after all, requires good bandwidth and a contemporary, well-optimized Wi-Fi setup. Nevertheless it opens the door to hundreds of thousands, if not tens of hundreds of thousands, of potential viewers throughout Quest headsets.
We’ll have to attend and see if the discharge of Immersix for PC VR headsets (and ultimately Quest headsets) creates a big sufficient demand for high-quality CGI content material in VR. And whereas Presenz has been round not less than 10 years at this level, the partnership with V-Nova and renewed curiosity in prime quality spatial video (pushed in an enormous manner by Imaginative and prescient Professional) could possibly be the second the tech has been ready for.
