GoPro Acquires Kolor and Going Virtual

GoPro, the king of action and 360 VR camera rig is now officially stepping into the virtual reality industry. GoPro has acquired virtual video expert Kolor. However, the investment amount has not yet been disclosed. The French startup company Kolor specializes in video footage stitching and 360 spherical video production.

GoPro Videos Turning Virtual & Fully Immersive

GoPro is best at capturing live actions, but the videos captured on GoPro, or with GoPro’s 360 rig are not exactly virtual or fully immersive. The Kolor Acquisition seemed only natural and makes perfect sense, we can expect Kolor’s video editing and stitching will take GoPro to a higher horizon!

What GoPro has in mind seem to be different than Jaunt’s virtual 360 videos. As Jaunt’s video such as “Visions of California” requires a VR headset to view. GoPro’s new demo video “Land, Air and Sea – A Virtual Reality Experience” is ready to be experience via Youtube’s new 360 video platform, currently available via the Google Chrome browser. Not limited by not having a VR headset such as Google Cardboard, audience can still enjoy and interact with the video on their desktop!

The video seemed boring until we start dragging, if you drag downwards, there is a big fish swimming under the boat!

I almost felt like I’m a professional mountain climber woo hoo! It feels good to be on the mt edge!

GoPro CEO Nick Woodman Said About Going Virtual Reality

“Given that GoPro is already the most widely used capture device for capturing life experiences in an immersive manner, it’s only natural that we have a seat at the tablet moving forward.”

“It’s only natural to think that they look to GoPro for virtual reality, personal virtual reality spherical content capture solutions in the future. And I think we’re well-placed to be a leader in that area,” he added.”

“We see that incredible opportunity for GoPro to be at the forefront of the virtual reality movement.”

“I think that as we see more and more fantastic VR content being produced using our products and as we make it easier for professionals and prosumers to do that, there’s going to be a natural trickle down desire at the consumer level where people are going to want to capture this type of experience for themselves.”

According to GoPro, more videos will be available in the near future and will be featured on various headsets and platform such as the Oculus. “Land, Air and Sea” can also be viewed using Google Cardboard, and Kolor’s 360 Video Player is free to download on this page.

We thought the video looks boring at first when we first open it on our desktop screen, until we realized we ought to open it with Chrome browser! And BOOM!!! Now we can play around and drag the video to different directions!

A statement from Kolor’s official website. We like how it sounds!

Our favorite was the rock climbing part, where I can drag the video’s field of view over the climber’s shoulder, it almost feel like we were climbing with them, pretty cool feeling for someone like me who is afraid of height!

Live action videos that are highly interactive and fully immersive are very attractive and exciting, especially for people like me who is afraid of extreme height, sky diving, mountain cliff mountain biking, rock climbing is not exactly my kind of sport, but I do enjoy watching climbers in action!

Source: Go Pro, Kolor, Triathlonbusiness, Trustedreviews, Slashgear, The Verge