Insta360 Ace Pro: the best action cam and good for 3DGS and even 36021287
 WGAN FanClub Member Queensland, Australia |
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Quote:Originally Posted by Meidansha I do not think it is going to work even though I know a lot of people are using 360 cameras for 3DGS with some good results. If you divide 360 photos in PTGUI my guess you are getting cube faces and the problem with them they have 0 overlap between them meaning that the next in a row Cube face sees nothing that the next in row cube face can. At least those who are using 360 video can have a bunch of 360 frames with very small distance between them so say left cube face cannot see anything from the same 360 photo front face but previous frames side faces can see the same objects as next frames front faces. When I move to my 3DGS rig design with the same action cams there will be a pole with 3 cameras mounted looking straight forward(bottom one looks up, middle dead straight forward and top looking down) and 2 cameras mounted looking to sides but still they all will have at least 15-25% overlap. This way if you take frames from each at the same timeline they all can be mapped because there will be something they all see at least there will be a pair that always share a view of the same object. As for your 8K 360 video that clearly shows it is not really 8K. That was I was getting from Pilot Era(see it below). And even my 8K from Pilot Era seems to be better than yours it is quite bad. That was the reason I started working on that rig |
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| Post 26 • IP flag post | ||
 WGANStandard Member Osaka, Japan |
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| @Wingman "As for your 8K 360 video that clearly shows it is not really 8K." It is 8K. Or at least the best an Insta360 X4 will do 8K. This is what the Insta360's 8K looks like with the sharpening turned off and shot in flat. It gives you an idea of what the camera actually does with the footage in processing. I see your example has sharpening on the horizon. If you want to better this with native sensor ability, then you need a bigger sensor or more sensors. That is what I am considering next. For example an array of GoPros arranged into a panoramic sphere. With regard to 3DGS, I have tried your method of several cameras on a pole. They were Insta360 OneRs. I ran 4 of them. I tried the rectilinear 4K lens and the 5.6K equirectangular 360 lenses. Unfortunately, I was not able to put together the video files in RealityScan (the preparation before postshot). That is what got me onto Matterport with 16K panoramas. The technique of subdividing the panoramas and removing the distortion in PTGUI followed by adding the .e57 and resulting images really does work. You just need more positions than you normally would scan in a Matterport tour and at varying heights. Believe me or not it is up to you, but I have had some success without having to spend anymore on hardware. The next step for me is to find a job where I can spend the extra time on scanning at different heights to make 3DGS from Matterport. |
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| Post 27 • IP flag post | ||
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WGAN Fan Club Member Queensland, Australia |
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| A little bit of update on my custom 360 rig. I went back to my holder camera design(just a box that is shown above) as using somebody's 3d model of Ace pro camera cage was fun at the beginning only. Since whoever has designed it done it just to create a cage I could not use it as it is. Holding a camera sitting in cage in your hands is different to using the same cage as a holder on a rig. Vibrations and wind at speed could easily break the cage thin walls. At a start I spent hours making it all thicker in Blender. However the cage design had a lot of curved surfaces that was hard to make thicker. And at the end if not already it can come to something unprintable. So I am back to my box that I created from scratch with as less triangles/quads as possible. So after I add a cap to it to make sure cameras won't be moving up out from the holders I will be ready to print the whole rig. However there is one addition that may delay it a bit. From a start I wanted to make my rig a high precision mapping rig. For that I was planning to use GeoAstra M8-X1 GNSS receiver, install it in the middle of the rig, use RTCM correction coming from NTRIP Caster app to get my 360 photos accuracy up to 1-2cm. Since its priced in USD($599) and AUD/USD exchange was quite low I was sitting and waiting for AUD to grow. It did from 0.65 to 0.7 but I was expecting more as it is still AU$800-850. While I was waiting I started talking to Google AI of what were my other options that can get me a small GNSS receiver with Bluetooth and built in battery that can be connected to Android and use NTRIP client app for RTK. That's yesterday and it came up with an idea that I should buy a SparkFun RTK Express. It costs the same as GeoAstra unit but have extra features like logging on board of the receiver. I started looking where to buy at the best price and then AI asked a very good question: Are you going to use it anywhere with poor satellite visibility or even no visibility at all, say in tunnels or inside a bulding. I kind of wanted to use it everywhere where possible so I said Yes. And it has told me I should get SparkFun RTK Express Plus version because it comes with 3D IMU and fusion process where you can use on board IMU to calculate your position when you loose all satellites due to space(indoor, tunnels, underbridge passes) or environment(thick tree canopy or tall bulding around). I realised that this can give me a freedom to capture anything and precisely map it. There will be limitation of accuracy inside or in bad satellite visibility and it is not going to be 1-2 cm but my location will still be calculate in real time in these conditions. The only challenge was to find who I can buy Plus version from as Spark Fun retired this product. They may still sell it but it is out of stock almost everywhere. You can find SparkFun RTK Express Kit that includes cheap wires and a mushroom type of antenna and it alone adds AUD$500 to a cost of the receiver if you buy it as standalone product without any extras I do not need. So after spending a few hours trying to find where I can buy it I found it at DigiKey and purchased for less than AU$1000 where 10% was a sales tax that I can claim back. I have an antenna used on my Eagle scanner but I have found that I can get a slightly taller version of it for AU$26 plus one short(75cm) and one long(2M) SMA cable to connect it to the receiver. I need two lengths as short one is going to be used with my rig while walking and the long one is for capturing from a car. The receiver has left DigiKey with UPS Saver already, the cables should come within 4 days and the antenna may take 10 days longer. The receiver is not going to be mounted on my rig, only the antenna is. It weighs very little so no problem with adding anything heavy that should be carried above my head. I am even thinking of turning it into something much better than just a 360 rig with location accuracy up to 2cm but I will see it all later when the rig is ready. |
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| Post 28 • IP flag post | ||
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WGAN Fan Club Member Queensland, Australia |
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| I have forgotten to give a link to SparkFun RTK Express plus receiver. If somebody wants it DigiKey has 1 left in stock Here is a link It is $610 in USD which is only about $11 more than RRP from SparkFun. Even though they may add your state/country sales tax. If you need a cable and an antenna please let me know and I will provide a link to what cable and antenna to buy. |
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| Post 29 • IP flag post | ||
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WGAN Fan Club Member Queensland, Australia |
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| Adding Tentacle timecode generator to the whole train and adding a small manual step to set timecode as close as possible to GNNS time Timecode will help to sync videos between 5 cameras to make sure right frames are stitched from every camera. Even with one remote and I have to use two insta360 GPS preview remotes each camera will have some delay in recording start. At 24 fps that could make 5-10 frames difference between each video. Timecode solving this problem and removing a need to use sound for syncing or app like filmora that is actually syncing by audio much better than Mistika VR Now the only weak spot with sync is GNSS time. If I could find a way to set my android clock with precise GNSS time that would solve a problem as the generator app can be set to the phone time as a timecode but only rooted devices can do it and nobody wants to root their device just for it. Considering all solutions from building a converter device that will take a GNSS time from my rover port, converts it to LTC and pass it to the generator or writing some code I found some manual steps just to do it quickly. Using the app called Seconds Digital Clock you can catch a moment when you GNSS time has a tiny difference with your android clock and press a button in the generator app to set timecode to android clock at that moment. The hole point of Seconds Digital Clock app is to show the difference so catching a minimum difference will sync your timecode to your GNNS time as close as it can be. I have see the difference to be as low as 17ms but even a value under 100ms would be good. The biggest difference I have seen was 2200ms and it is quite a big error to match photos video frames with 1-2cm accurate location data coming from the rover. Tools required to do all that 1x Tentacle Generator-cost about AUD$360 1x Zoom ZHA-4 headphone amplifier that will act as an active splitter to connect the generator to 5 cameras. 6X audio cables male to male 3.5mm jack to connect the generator with the amplifier and then connect amplifier output ports to the cameras. I am hopping to get all 6 in 1m length for under $30 1X audio splitter 1 to 2- this is only needed because the amplifier has four ports and I have 5 cameras so one port will be split in 2 to provide extra connection to the 5th camera. Should be no more than $10 5x microphone adapters for Ace Pro 2 to add audio port to the cameras for timecode $99 Someone may ask me, why not use timecode set by the insta360 app as there is a functionality built in for it into Ace Pro cameras. Well I have tried and there is always some difference. I have tried only two cameras and the difference reported has been about 1000ms. That's already bad and I cannot imagine what difference is going to be between 5 of them set that way. |
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| Post 30 • IP flag post | ||
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WGAN Fan Club Member Queensland, Australia |
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| I have forgotten to add why GNSS time is critical in the whole train. If I create a log for location data(gpx track) on my phone the rover is connected to via Bluetooth the log will be adding data only 5 times per second. It seems to be Bluetooth limitation. It is bad because videos are run at 24fps meaning there will be almost 5 times more frames than lines in the log with new location data. Trying to sync location log with frames it can only give the same location value for 5 frames. It kills all point with 1-2cm RTK precision as in half of a second even with walking you will move at lease a few dozens of cm while frames location will only change in a few frames. However Spark Fun RTK Express plus rover has logging on board and even though it is not GPX track format it still can be converted to GPX later. But that's not a point, the point is the logging on board of the rover can run at 20-30Hz, not 5Hz as with Bluetooth. 25HZ frequency of logging means there should be new location recorded for every frame. |
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| Post 31 • IP flag post | ||