Something like this has already been spotted, several years ago - in an amusement park! And it was a premium attraction, a wonder that not only proved beyond any doubt that God does exist, but convinced you that he just loves going to cinema!

Well, times are (not?) changing. Either all that story about God is a fraud, either they only underestimated his goodness. For one thing is sure : "this" can now be enjoyed in a - simple web browser. In a somewhat different form, that is.

More seriously. yellowBird, a Groningen (Netherlands) based company, has democratized the 360° video playback by publishing a player (built on flash) capable of showing this kind of moving images. Basically, the technology consists of a six-lens camera, like the one featured in Google Street View, used for shooting movies instead of photos. The images (videos, that is) are then stitched to form an all-around panorama view, and the result is stored on a server (with all the hosting, streaming, connections and capacity issues that go along. Another story). The proprietary player, like the one YouTube uses to share videos, is available for embedding the content in your web-page.

Do you know what kind of TV you'll be watching in the (near) future?

More details in yellowBird's press release (pdf).

[ via TheStartup ]