Have you ever watched a video and wanted so badly to view the scene from a different perspective? Maybe you wanted to see what was happening behind the person filming. The Eye Mirror is an upcoming camera accessory that should let you pan 360° within a video as it’s playing. It looks surprisingly simple, and it apparently works with just about any camera you already own.
The product is currently in the Kickstarter phase, but is already funded, and the samples so far look pretty impressive. Basically the device consists of a cone shaped mirror and special lens that you affix your camera to facing upwards. The resulting footage is a single distorted perspective that is processed in a special viewer to look like a normal first-person view. It looks a lot like Google Street View, but it moves!
Using the Eye Mirror with a GoPro seems like the most practical, considering the GoPro-compatible model is around $US250, and has a relatively small footprint. If you want to use a bigger camera, other models are available, but they can run you up to $US600. Unfortunately, you will have to mod your GoPro a bit, but it looks like the change is reversible.
One of the coolest implementations of Eye Mirror would be pairing it with an Oculus Rift, as pictured on the Kickstarter page. Unfortunately, from looking at the sample panoramas, you can’t tilt up and down in the video, only around on one axis, which would limit the immersive quality. But still! Being able to create your own virtual reality experiences seems outrageously cool. [via The Phoblographer]