360 view of a person in VR

I’m a total nube so apologies if this is an uninformed question.

Was wondering if it would be possible to walk all the way around someone in VR space, and be able to see all sides of that person at any time.

Could you take 2-3 (even four) 360 cameras and put them around someone while they do certain movements so that all sides of the person are captured?

The application of this that I was thinking would be to record all sides of a martial artist while they perform forms (or katas), so that every aspect of the kata is recorded.

That way when viewing the VR later, someone could “walk” around the recorded martial artist in VR space and be able to see everything, and be able to watch the performance over and over from different angles, or walk around the martial artist while they were performing the actions.

Can any of you experienced folks weigh in on this?

It’s called volumetric video, and some people are already using it. The game The 7th Guest features it, though with lower quality. Some adult websites are also starting to explore this technology.

You’re describing volumetric media. While the capture process is well-established, distributing anything beyond still frames is still too data-intensive to be practical.

That’s not exactly true. There are apps with videogrammetric people on PCVR and even standalone Quest. With better compression and optimization, it’s becoming more practical, making real-time interaction with high-quality 3D captures possible.

It’s possible, but you’re thinking in the wrong direction. 360 cameras capture everything around them, but most of the image would be wasted since it’s not focused on the target. You’d be better off with a regular camera, not a fisheye.

What you really want is a setup like they used in The Matrix, where the person is surrounded by dozens of cameras to capture the action from all angles. :point_down:

Just so you know, this technology has been around for years. Microsoft even had a dedicated studio for 360-degree capture, which they used for Hololens content.

It’s now quite advanced and expensive to do, unlike 360 inside-out videos, which can be made with consumer-level hardware these days.

It’s possible to capture an actor volumetrically, but not something the average home user can do. Plus, it usually only works for someone standing or sitting still, not for action shots like martial arts.

As someone else mentioned, motion capture is probably a better option for that.