NBC did a lot of work to cover the Olympics, including support for VR viewing. However, those that tried the technology seem to have been widely unimpressed, although the slow pace of curling seemed to have gone well. One of the technologies that could help with the use of VR is the use of tiling approaches – we have reported on the work being done by the Fraunhofer, which has been included in an MPEG HEVC OMAF standard (MWC 2018 Roundup Part 1).
The technology is also being developed by Tiledmedia that we spoke to, briefly, at CES (MDM Round Up CES 2018). On the Ericsson booth at MWC, an academic from Sweden was showing a project that Ericsson is involved with on the same area. So, there is lots of work going on to try to provide images for VR much more efficiently, by sending details of the viewer’s point of interest, and choosing just the tiles that are useful.
ScreenPlays Magazine has published an interview with the co-founder of Tiledmedia, Rob Koenen, that we met at CES that goes into some detail
Tile-Based HEVC Video for VR from the Fraunhofer HHI
