Red Bull Racing has teamed up with Norwegian outfit Making View to create the world’s first spherical 360-degree video from a Formula One car, and we're sure glad they did! The ViewCam 360 system combines a spherical lens and special video technology to allow viewers to watch the breathtaking footage from almost any angle and even pan around the high-speed action as it plays.
Created by Making View, ViewCam 360 is a modular system that uses a spherical lens to capture equirectangular video at a resolution of 4K x 2K, and a frame rate of 25-50 fps. Recordings can then be played back, and interacted with, via MakingViewer, a Flash/HTML5 web-based 2D/360 photo and video viewer.
But while the tech itself is all very impressive, kudos also has to go to whoever came up with the genius idea of mounting the device – which weighs just 600 g (21 oz), contains up to 224 GB of internal memory and is fully remote controlled – to the top of a speeding Formula One racing car, because the result is amazing.
Footage shows Sebastien Buemi throwing a Red Bull Racing F1 car around the the Rudskogen Motorsenter circuit in Norway at 200 mph-plus (322 km/h+), putting both his car and the camera to the test. Because the ViewCam 360 is mounted behind and slightly above the driver, you get to see everything from Buemi stepping into the car to him crossing the finishing line, from every angle, apart from up.
Viewed in high quality, it's clear the spherical lens produces sharp detailed images from all directions. Viewers can also use the arrows on their keyboard or a mouse to decide which angle they want to view the action from, and even move around the 360-degree frame as the video plays. The space button is used to start or pause the video.
Here's the footage for you to take for a spin yourself. Give it a minute to load. We suggest you view it full screen and settle in to watch this multiple times. Maybe you could even embrace the 360-degree footage by seeing what it would be like to drive an F1 car while doing Exorcist-style head spins!
Source: Making View
