Below are two videos in 4K 2D 360 format created with Google Earth Studio on a Google Chrome browser. I was given early access to test this browser based app and decided to experiment with the immersive VR video capability by focussing on central London and Snowdonia in North Wales. Both of these videos are designed to demonstrate the quality of graphics and the sense of immersion provided by the VR360 option. The first video is a tour of central London in 360 format and to interact with it you need to swipe on the video, use your TV remote arrow buttons or the controls on the top left of the YouTube video display.
The second of the 2D 360 tours focuses on Snowdonia in North Wales. Fly down to the UK from space and take a trip across the mountain range for spectacular views generated by photogrammetry included with Google Earth. There are only a select few locations in each country with photogrammetry / 3D data – usually these are key cities such as London, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney and other major cities. There are also many national parks and points of interest for tourists that use 3D data. For other areas 2D photography is the only available option for the moment but it is possible to switch on a guide within Google Earth Studio to indicate where 3D data is available.
There are a variety of features not used in the experiments above that are available within Google Earth Studio including the ability to roll the camera, export of 3D camera data for purposes such as overlaying text in After Effects, control over the field of view and the influence of a focal point. I tried many of these options and the video below demonstrates use of the field of view (FOV) adjustment as well as leaving the labels for locations and businesses switched on. At the time of writing this article I could not get Googles cloud computing to render an 8 minute video at 60fps with labels (the labels did not even appear on shorter videos) – to enable the labels as seen in the 4K River Thames Tour below I had to enable a screen capture then stabilise the video in Premier Pro and this stabilisation process is why the Google Earth logo is a little jittery 😉 Its best to view this in 4K quality on a large 4K screen.
The final experiment involves recording motion over the city of Barcelona at the same angle of approx 60 degrees. The animation was export as a 4K video and then imported into Adobe Premier Pro. Gradient blur was added to the top and bottom of the image to simulate a camera lens with a small depth of field which in turn gives the impression that the subject matter is a small scale model. See below for the results of this experiment:
Many thanks to the Google Earth team for providing me with early access. You can find out more information about Google Earth Studio on their website and see other examples of experimental 360 video created by Peter Simcoe on the Google Tilt Brush blog post.
