Google making AR/VR more immersive on consumer devices

A team of Google researchers has created a new technology to take the immersive AR and VR experiences to a new level.

New research shows the ability to record, reconstruct, compress and deliver high-quality immersive light field videos, lightweight enough to be streamed over regular Wi-Fi.

“We’re making this technology practical, bringing us closer to delivering a truly immersive experience to more consumer devices,” said Michael Broxton, Google research scientist.

Photos and videos play a huge role in our day-to-day experience on mobile devices. “We are hoping that someday immersive light field images and videos will play an equally important role in future AR and VR platforms,” he adds.

Wide field of view scenes can be recorded and played back with the ability to move around within the video after capturing it, revealing new perspectives.

Another breakthrough in this work involves data compression.

The idea is not only to develop a system capable of reconstructing video for a truly immersive AR/VR experience but also to access the experience via consumer AR and VR headsets and displays, and even in a web browser.

The new system compresses light field video while still preserving its original visual quality, and it does so by using conventional texture atlasing and widely supported video codecs.

“Users will be able to stream this light field video content over a typical, fast-speed internet connection,” Broxton says.