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How to Stream live volumetric video into VR ?

April 22, 2020 Tech
Stream live volumetric video into VR
Volumetric video live streaming is available to everyone using EF EVE ™ Volcapp application. It is becoming increasingly popular and you can hear more and more people talking about volumetric capture and virtual reality (VR). People are starting to realise that VR and AR could be the future of collaboration, training as well as education. We can already see a growing number of VR applications which instead of gaming focus on business solutions. VR training solutions in manufacturing, collaboration platforms or situation manipulation software are not new. However, the most important part here is that many users are starting to understand that for VR/AR to be truly valuable for the B2B market it is missing the most important bit – real people. It comes at no surprise as currently all of the applications represent people as 3D modeled avatars. In gaming this is great but is it great for business meetings and training. Therefore, volumetric video live streaming ability to bring real people into virtual worlds could be a game changer.

Live volumetric video streaming into virtual reality.

How to use volumetric capture for live streaming ?

To start streaming live volumetric video:

  1. Choose 1 or 2 Kinect sensors
  2. Connect the sensors to the PC
  3. Download EF EVE ™ Volumetric capture software
  4. Put a person’s you are streaming to email address into the “Start Stream” box.
Streaming live volumetric video requires hardware and software.First of all you will need to have 1 or 2 sensors. For live streaming we publicly support Kinect Xbox One but if you are planning to use Azure Kinect or Intel Realsense just get in touch. Single sensor will allow you to stream one side of the person. However, if you are planning to stream just the face it might be enough. Two sensors set up will let you position the sensors to cover the whole 360 or 180 degrees. Once you have the sensors, connect them to your PC by using the Kinect adapter. You can purchase one on Ebay for as little as $20. The recommended PC for the capture and streaming is WINDOWS 10 operating system, CPU is Intel® Core™ i9 – 3.0 GHz or higher, 16GB RAM, SSD, NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1080 series or better. The person who will be receiving the stream only needs to have a PC which is Win 10 but it doesn’t have to be a powerful one. If you already connected the sensors to the PC you will need to place it on a light stand and lift it to 1.3m height for full body capture.

Software setup

Once the setup is ready next thing you need is EF EVE ™ Volcapp Business software. Subscribe to one and open the app. On the home page you will choose the sensor and go to the “Calibration” window to check if your sensor is covering the area you want. You will see that on the top right corner of the screen you can choose between 2D view and 3D view. 2D view allow you to see the cover area. If you choose 3D view you will see what you will be streaming. While having a 2 sensors set up you will also be able to calibrate it automatically by using markers. The calibration process is described here.

The public version supports one to one stream but let us know if you would like to stream live volumetric video to many people at once. Now you will need to type the person’s email address whom you want to stream yourself to in the block on the top left “ Start stream”. The person you are trying to call needs to go to “VR Player” on the top right. He will immediately receive a volumetric video stream and will be able to choose between 2D mode for experience on desktop or choose VR.  The receiving person also needs to have EF EVE™ Volcapp Business Subscription.

You want to develop your own live streaming application ?

Live volumetric video streaming can be applied in different cases. Teleconferencing applications, entertainment, training are just a couple of them. From our experience everyone who is thinking about developing their own product has additional requirements. It might be that you want to stream to specific devices, support multiple locations or apply it in your research.get in touch and we will advise you on what which product would suit your needs: hello@ef-eve.com
You can find tutorials and more information about our 3 products here.
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