First Sight Media has announced that it has added 360-degree video streaming to conferences and exhibitions. This will offer its customers the exciting possibility of adding virtual reality experiences to their events using the company’s new 360° video camera. This new technology gives every viewer the freedom to explore the whole view, with the aim of winning larger virtual audiences and increasing their engagement with brands and sponsors as a result.
First Sight Media has succeeded in integrating the new 360-degree camera with its own streaming technology and workflow to allow viewers to take advantage of its data-hungry features even when connectivity may be less than ideal. The new camera features six wide-angle 8K video cameras and stitches the images together in real-time to create a spherical image, which is then sent to First Sight Media’s on-site streaming suite for further processing and streaming out to audiences.
Richard Belcher, managing director, First Sight Media, was enthused, saying, “The camera offers the ability for viewers to pan, tilt, zoom and reframe – exploring the full angle of view on one screen! With so much control in their hands, viewers can become the director, as they choose what they see and when they see it by literally looking around with their device, just as if they were in the room!”
Belcher continued, “Online audiences can now be in the middle of all the action. They’ll be amongst physical attendees and part of the tech world’s latest endeavours to build, as Mark Zuckerberg recently put it, ‘something that can create a sense of human presence’. A 360-degree view enables an event’s audience to really dive into the action, opening opportunities for virtual visitors and delegates to interact more deeply with stages and presentations.
“This 360-degree camera gives us a new way to engage viewers with exhibitors and event sponsors – something which has so far proved challenging for hybrid events. More and more of our customers want to capitalise on the online audiences they created over the last 3 years, and streaming an event using this kit offers an exciting way for audiences to feel involved without necessarily being present. This will ultimately increase virtual visitor engagement with brands and sponsors,” Belcher concluded.
