Background:

Also known as “immersive video,” spatial video delivers rich three-dimensional recordings of a location and the objects that are contained within.

This novel video format creates a viewing experience with six degrees of freedom, also called 6DOF: If the viewer changes their position, then the perspective in the video footage changes accordingly. In this way, spatial video is far superior to 3D video where objects merely appear to pop out of a flat plane, but offer no dynamic shift in perspective.

Our client, ScannedReality, offers software for capturing spatial videos. These videos can be viewed from any angle and are thus ideal for immersive playback in virtual and augmented reality. The client’s target customers are immersive filmmakers, universities, and film colleges who would like to explore spatial video as a new and innovative media format, as well as organizations in the AR and VR space who would like to add authentic and fully three-dimensional recordings to their applications. ScannedReality’s software enables capturing fully spatial videos at high quality with affordable camera setups.

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Market Dynamics Create a Challenge:

ScannedReality was using the Microsoft Azure Kinect cameras that were discontinued by the firm in 2023, leaving many partners to hunt for new solutions or find support for the discontinued product line. Other depth cameras, such as those based on the ‘active stereo’ measurement principle, tend to have significantly lower depth image quality than the Azure Kinect (and the Orbbec Femto Bolt).

Compared to active stereo vision, TOF (Time-of-Flight) technology offers higher precision in depth edge detection, capturing more accurate depth information. Additionally, TOF-generated point clouds are more stable, reducing noise and irregularities, resulting in more accurate scene reconstruction.

ScannedReality, while exploring market options, found that in many cases it was difficult to synchronize other cameras without significant electrical engineering knowledge. Even with Azure Kinect cameras, the internal camera clocks could be inaccurate, which required larger timing windows in the multi-camera synchronization to achieve reliable operation.

All of these market dynamics were impacting ScannedReality’s growth and new customer acquisition.

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Orbbec Femto Bolt delivers to ScannedReality needs:

The Orbbec Femto Bolt was easily integrated into ScannedReality software, and the final solution leveraged the following product features:

• The high depth image quality, allowing the client to achieve high quality 3D reconstructions.
• The ability to run at 30 FPS at high color and depth resolutions, for achieving high video quality.
• The multi-camera synchronization ability to trigger all cameras at nearly the same time for generating consistent images without interference.

ScannedReality found that while using Azure Kinect, the product’s limited clock accuracy delivered a sub-par experience—using many cameras in a multi-camera setup were unreliable if the setup required tight timings. In contrast, with Femto Bolt cameras, they now use 10 tightly synchronized cameras seamlessly.

3D reconstruction using Femto Bolt

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Orbbec Femto Bolt benefits:

Orbbec Femto Bolt is a compact, high-performance stereo image and video capture device with multi-mode Depth and RGB cameras. The depth camera uses Microsoft’s industry-proven Time-of-Flight (ToF) technology and has identical operating modes and performance as the Microsoft Azure Kinect and Orbbec Femto Mega. The Bolt offer the following benefits:

• Depth camera with 1 Megapixel ToF sensor and 120 degree FOV
• Up to 15fps at 1024×1024 or 30fps at 640×576 depth resolution
• 4K RGB with HDR
• 6DoF IMU
• Sophisticated and accurate synchronization trigger control for multi-sensor network