I spoke with Scott Broock at Engadget Expand 2014 last week to learn more about these films. In addition to the visual component, Broock told me that Jaunt believes that sound is vital to the experience. To that end, Jaunt partnered up with Source Sound, a sound design firm which took the audio that Jaunt captured and augmented it while mixing in Dolby Atmos.
“Simultaneous with our video capture, we capture a full sound sphere of audio information with our ambisonic recording,” Broock told me. “Bringing that recording into Atmos, we can sweeten that sphere of information and we can also place sound effects in the space surrounding you to create greater drama and to aid in directing the viewer’s attention.”
Broock showed me the same three trailers on a Google Cardboard unit, which was neatly branded by Jaunt, and the footage looked mostly comparable, though there was noticeably more latency than with the DK2. The footage, which played back on a Nexus 5—a smartphone that’s more than a year old—was running at 60FPS, according to Broock. It was clear that Jaunt is excited that a large swath of users will be able to experience their content on such hardware without the need for an Oculus Rift or a brand new smartphone.
Jaunt says the public will be able to get their head into these trailers very soon and when you can, we’ll be sure to let you know.
