At CE Week on June 23rd, I saw a 3D lens attachment for GoPro Hero 3 and Hero 4 cameras. The lens has been designed by Vitrima and launched on Indiegogo. Colin Marshall, VP of Fantem Technologies, the company behind Vitrima, explained the system to me.
Vitrima 3D lens for the Hero 3 and 4 cameras and VR Shinecon viewer for the 3D videos.
This lens uses a split-field approach to 3D. That is, the left image is recorded by one half of the camera image sensor and the right image is recorded by the other half, producing the 3D image in a side-by-side format. If you have a 16:9 camera such as the GoPro, the 3D image is half that or 8:9 or almost square. The Vitrima lens has a fixed 60mm interpupillary distance and no adjustments – focus the GoPro camera just as you normally would, i.e. don’t focus it at all.
This lens will be shipping in July. The Indiegogo price is $79, or $99 bundled with a viewer. The viewer, made by VR Shinecon for Vitrima, is similar to a basic smartphone-based VR headset. It had a couple things going for it, compared to other smartphone-based VR headsets I’ve used. First, it was comfortable to wear, at least for the brief demo I got. Second, it has both interpupillary and focus adjustments and both these adjustments actually worked pretty well. Finally, it was very easy to access the touch screen on the smartphone. Flip the viewer open, start your 3D GoPro video on the touchscreen, flip the unit shut, pull the unit onto your head and enjoy the 3D video.
When used for VR with a wide field of view, smartphone viewers are less than satisfactory in terms of resolution. When this headset is used for GoPro 3D videos made with the Vitrima lens, the relatively narrow field of view makes the resolution acceptable, i.e. ½ HD. Cool. For a 30 second demo, watch the video on the Indigogo website or YouTube.
The Indiegogo price is available for the next 3 weeks. After that, Marshall said the Vitrima lens will have a MSRP of $129 and the VR Shinecon viewer will be sold by Vitrima at a MSRP of $29. –Matthew Brennesholtz
