northStudio360 Takes 360 Video to New Heights

In their day, virtual tours were a highly effective way to promote real estate, restaurants or golf courses. But today’s internet users aren’t satisfied with viewing the world from a single vantage point. Like real life, they want a journey—an unbroken, realistic trip where they can touch, pinch and pull their way through an environment.

Enter: 360 video. Unlike virtual tours, 360 video consists of moving footage with several points for view, making it an authentic way to experience a location. You can still control a 360 degree panorama, but instead of being magically transported from room to room, you move throughout spaces as you would in real life.

Until now, 360 video gave only a ground level view of the world. But northStudio360, a Vancouver based interactive content provider, has taken this technology to the skies.

With extensive experience in enhancing the online experience for many real estate and tourism companies through photo tours, northStudio360 raised the bar by capturing a 360 degree field of view with six cameras recording six video streams. To create video from the air, they built a custom rig from high end consumer products to capture images from beneath a helicopter. Google, NASA and National Geographic have had this technology for some time, but northStudio360’s custom-built rig and proprietary video-merging software allow them to produce results with unmatched quality, at a considerably lower cost.

A few years ago, internet and processor speeds were too slow to deliver 360 video to the public. But now that they’re faster, the world can easily access the most persuasive, creative and effective advertising available.

Teaming up with Nimmo Bay, one of North America’s top heli-adventure destinations, northStudio360 produced the first 360 video that showcases the tourism industry’s power of influence. To put the video together, they spent many days exploring the resort and adventuring around a 150 kilometre track of British Columbia’s coastal mainland. They ended up with amazingly high-quality footage of not only the Nimmo Bay Resort, but also its surrounding glaciers, snow capped mountains, rivers, waterfalls and old growth forests. The video’s interactive, 360 degree technology engages the visual sense in a heightened, mesmerizing and extremely emotional way. As the first theatrical 360 video, we have heard it brings people to tears. With northStudio360’s high quality virtual video, consumers will be even more inspired to experience the real thing. The power of the internet for tourism just got even more powerful.

In the future, northStudio360 plans to create video environments that are completely tagable. Imagine flying over the Grand Canyon via 360 video. While you’re exploring, you think, “Wow, that’s where we had lunch last summer!” You stop the video, tag the cliff and add some photos from your vacation. Like an ever-growing Wikipedia video, it becomes an informational video with endless possibilities.