Google partners with GoPro to launch Jump, a virtual reality filming kit

Today at its annual I/O developer conference in San Francisco, Google announced Jump, a new project for people to create and share virtual-reality experiences, following on Google’s progress with its expanding Cardboard virtual-reality platform.

Jump will be compatible with GoPro cameras, enabling as many as 16 cameras to work together “as one,” Clay Bavor of Google Cardboard told the crowd. The system can work with an array made out any material, including cardboard, Bavor said.

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Jump performs color calibration and exposure compensation to ensure that pictures from so many cameras all come together without any awkward dividing lines.

“To fix those, our algorithms use information about the underlying structure of the scenes to perform three-dimensional alignments,” Bavor said. “[It can] compensate for depths of different objects in a scene, like this. This understanding of depth that also enables us to create all these in between viewpoints, which you can see here.”

The Jump assembler, which turns images into virtual reality video, will become available to select creators worldwide this summer. And YouTube will support Jump content.

Google will share camera geometry and plans this summer, Bavor said.

Incidentally, last night GoPro chief executive Nick Woodman, during an appearance at the Code conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., showed off a new rig featuring several GoPro Hero 4 cameras.