“It’s like Google Street View for your iPhone,” explains Tom Lawton, the man behind Bubblescope, an idea that’s been kicking around for years — and with a successful pitch on CrowdFunder — could finally arrive as an $AU100 iPhone accessory in September.
The accessory works with the BubblePix App to capture and share 360 degree stills and videos. You can see it at work in these videos, or swivel around other test images yourself at: bubblescope.com/examples.
The example images and video we have used in our pitch are captured by our pre-production sample…we know that these issues are resolvable so the bubbles from our final manufactured units will be crisp clean and beautiful! Our manufacturing pre-production units are in progress and we’ll publish some more examples from these as soon as we have them.
CrowdFunder is like a European Kickstarter, and on their pitch page, the team says they need to hit £10,000. They better get cracking, because they’re only a quarter of the way there, and that competing 360 Degree Eyeball over on Kickstarter already has $120,000 funding! Of course, you could also just use a 360 panorama app, too. [CrowdFunder and BubbleScope via Pocket-Lint]
Rob
Monday, July 18, 2011 at 4:56 PMNo wonder 95% of the video is him wandering around aimlessly with a stupid look on his face, or (regular) still photos of himself, because the output of the device, which is barely shown at all in the video, looks crap!
Vron
Monday, July 18, 2011 at 6:41 PMIt’s truely the WORST Quality I have EVER Seen!
Danny Allen
Monday, July 18, 2011 at 7:40 PMYou saw the note about pre-production / proof of concept yeah? That’s heaps common with hardware, especially cameras and laptops
Nicholas Wilson
Monday, July 18, 2011 at 7:02 PMLooks like a different shaped http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1106196796/the-gopano-micro-a-lens-for-capturing-360-video-on/
Also funded via a VC website with $169,000 backing it and due for release this month.
DamoTheBrave
Monday, July 18, 2011 at 8:27 PMBlech, what awful results. You’re right Danny, a proof of concept should not have to be near the quality of the final product but he has some issues to contend with. The largest two are in my opinion –
1. the reflector needs to be of excellent quality to get an adequate result.
2. The image captured is going to be of extremely low quality due to the 720p being spread across the vr. That means the resolution of the video is likely to be 640px wide or less.
Good idea but it needs perfect execution to succeed.
Tom Lawton
Monday, July 18, 2011 at 9:21 PMDanny’s right to point out that what you see there are images from a proof of concept. While still a prototype, here is a better image example http://www.bubblescope.com/examples/bubble1.html
In production, we will use only glass optics, and that includes the reflector – certain industrial processes mean that we can make some significant improvements to image quality through volume production. BubbleScope shoots two types of image – high res stills at 5Mpix (from iPhone 4) and video, which is obviously of lower resolution.
We felt that it was important to only use images in our early promotional material that represent actual images shot with the BubbleScope (unlike the other products that have appeared on Kickstarter who have cleared duped consumers by using footage shot with higher end systems – check the comments). It’s important to manage people’s expectations when shooting one-shot 360 images with a smartphone. What’s important is that our design has been developed to be cross platform & future-proofed, so as smartphone cameras continue improve (more resolution, better optics, high dynamic range etc) then the results you get with a BubbleScope will improve too. We’re confident that when we launch we will be at an acceptable standard. Cheers, Tom
Danny Allen
Monday, July 18, 2011 at 9:40 PMHeya Tom,
Thanks for dropping in and explaining that. Appreciate it!
You’ll have to send us a test unit so we can review it for the readers ;)
Definitely seems to be interest!
Anyone else have any questions for Tom?
Tom Lawton
Monday, July 18, 2011 at 9:56 PMWe’ll definately get a sample to Danny @ Gizmodo for testing. It’s also worth noting that Kickstarter doesn’t allow projects outside of the US (otherwise we’d have been on there before the competition had done the same – we’ve been banging on their door for over a year). The challenge to us is that Kickstarter is the only crowdfunding mechanism that has international interest and is followed by a massive crowd. We’re only at 25% funded but we only have 0.002% of the exposure. Truth is – our project is happening – we already have interest from major distribution channels because they have high confidence in the product and the legacy of our intellectual property. Our crowdfunder pitch is a great means for users to pre-order with 25% discount and become beta testers.