SlopeViews @ Birds of Prey

Careful observers might have noticed 360° video cameras all over the television last weekend. Immersive Media had cameras at both the MTVu Woodie Awards and Hockey Night In Canada on Friday night. Immersive Media’s new agent, SlopeViews, lived up to their name at the Birds of Prey World Cup Ski Race event at Beaver Creek Ski Resort. I’ll be posting about each of these projects in 360° video this week, but today, I want to discuss SlopeViews.

Focused on destination resort marketing, SlopeViews is a relatively new arrival on the 360° video scene, but they have hit the ground running on a number of projects. The Birds of Prey Ski Race was an opportunity to showcase their capabilities to the snow sports industry that is gearing up for the Winter Olympics in February.

James Hay, SlopeViews CEO, tells me that they captured some amazing imagery that will bring audiences all of the energy of the event. They shot the initial build up and transformation of Beaver Creek Ski Resort, who already has some fantastic 360° video virtual tours on their website, into a World Cup venue. The Vail Valley Foundation has the time-lapse piece from the building of the Finish Stadium here and will be featuring more content in days to come.


We can look forward to seeing athlete interviews, fan rowdiness, and much more from the Birds of Prey via the SlopeViews 360° video camera and their crew of Immersive Media Producers. With backgrounds in adventure sports, media, and travel industry marketing, the SlopeViews’ team is ideally suited to bring clients and their prospective visitors the ultimate experience of a destination online and, finally, fulfill the promise of the term “virtual tour”.

And here are some photos that SlopeViews provided via their active Facebook page.

yellowBird Captures T-Mobile Sing-Along 360° Video Experience

A couple of days ago, Tech Crunch had a piece about yellowBird, the Dutch startup employing LadyBug 2 cameras from Point Grey Research. Glad to see so many comments in favor of the 360° video platform, I chimed in on the discussion and mentioned that I had not seen much from yellowBird since it's initial demo was released last January. Well, thanks to another commenter, I was pointed to T-Mobile's Sing-Along 360° Experience. This is just good fun.

Apparently, the team at yellowBird were invited to Trafalgar Square by Saatchi & Saatchi London to shoot this T-Mobile brand-affirming event. 13,000 people gathered to sing Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in front of a larger video display of they lyrics. This sort of branded flash mob sing-along has been quite popular with the people in attendance, on YouTube, and with T-Mobile as a way to connect with customers with little fun. It's great to see a company like T-Mobile wanting to take the concept still further. By documenting the event in 360° video, they gave the rest of us the opportunity to see and hear what it was like in the crowd.

It's also great to see a renowned creative team like Saatchi & Saatchi continue to bring 360° video to its clients. Saatchi & Saatchi teamed up with Immersive Media earlier this year on it's work with Armani Jeans in a guided 360° video brand experience for its new website.

Congrats to yellowBird on garnering significant attention for their work with 360° video. Apparently, the TechCrunch article (spread widely on Twitter) drew enough interest to overload their servers this week, those are growing pains that I'm sure they are happy to deal with. Here's the video that got people talking.

You can also experience a hot-air balloon ride with yellowBird's founders over the Dutch country-side while they interview for a TV news program here
Here's a photo from the Trafalgar Square event

360° Video Powers A Serious Game To Train US Army, Wins American Business Award

The YouTube video above describes RealityV, a 360° Video platform built by InVism, a simulation and visualization services company, in partnership with EffectiveUI, an award-winning user experience design and development agency.

The project effectively employs 360° Video in a "Choose Your Own Adventure"-style training program for US Military personnel to put them into photorealistic experiences that they are likely to encounter overseas and aid them in effective and culturally-sensitive decision-making. Deployed as Army 360: Immersive Cultural Simulation the RealityV platform also incorporates "emotionally charged high-definition video" in combination with 360° Video. Marking the first publicly discussed use of actual actors, scripts, and production values for a 360° Video project, Army 360 appears to be a highy effective training tool.

You can see a rather long and slow to load trailer for the project here. Below is a simple screenshot from the trailer.

The project won a Stevie Award in the "Interactive Multimedia - Training" category from the American Business Awards according to Fox Business News on July 22 in New York. Read the full story here.

It is worth noting that the 360° Video content seems to have been captured with a GoPano optic from EyeSee360° on an HD video camera. This is the first time I've seen a project use this single-sensor system, and I am intrigued.

Congratulations to InVism (formerly Intelligence Gaming), EffectiveUI, and The US Army on an innovative and effective program that will saves lives, both military and civilian. I, for one, hope to see much more of this type of focused effort to create engaging, educational, and entertaining projects in the powerfully interactive 360° video medium.

360° Video from the Grand Canyon

From the rim of the Grand Canyon at Guano Point on the Hualapi Nation's land. The steel structure looming overhead was used to run a cable to the large cave on the far side of the canyon (look for it using the zoom tool in the upper left). The operation mined bat guano from the cave until an F-16 running the canyon well below the rim sliced through the cable at some point in the 1980's, at least that was the story that our guide told us. That's his white Hummer parked under the structure. If you get a chance to visit the Grand Canyon Skywalk, Guano Point is just a short hike away and offers a bit more rustic view.