Immersive Media demos interactive 360 video concept

Just recently, while scanning the various Flash blogs, I came across an intriguing concept piece on Down the Foxhole that combined 360-degree cameras, video, and a first-person shooter.

While Immersive Media’s concept isn’t much of a departure from your typical first-person platform game, the effect of using true video can immediately be felt.  This is obviously meant as just a proof of concept and not even a full demo, but the combination of 360-video with timeline-based game play is something that definitely deserves note.  Too often the use of video is limited to flat static rectangles in a Flash environment.

Last year’s surge inPaperVision 2.0 production (and, I guess we should acknowledge away3D) allowed for much more interesting use of video.  Still, the implementation generally resembled a 3D object onto which a movie was being projected. A step forward, indeed, but the speed with which the application of the technologies became mainstays on sites like FWA proved that interest in web treatments that fluted the traditions of basic interaction was ravenous (examples 1,2) .  As always, marketing strategy, user experience, end-user hardware, and yes, even budget are some of the largest elements to consider before agencies can create these types of web experiences.  All the more reason to take pause when examples like this push the envelope.

See their fullscreen demos of the technology here.