Sony has dipped into the acquisitions market again, this time buying a UK computer vision company that can help the PlayStation-maker “enhance gameplay visuals” ahead of the PS6 games console launch in the years to come.
Sony has purchased Cinemersive Labs, a company that specialises in turning 2D photos into 3D volume’s you can – to a certain extent – walk around in VR space. You can check out some of the fruits of its Parallax tech here.
In a blog post confirming the acquisition yesterday, Sony said: “Following the acquisition, the Cinemersive Labs team will join SIE’s Visual Computing Group (VCG) and contribute to our broader efforts in advancing state of the art visual computing within games. This includes applying machine learning to enhance gameplay visuals, improve rendering techniques, and unlock new levels of visual fidelity for players.”
Given plans are well underway for Sony’s next generation PS6 console are well underway, it’s a safe bet to assume the company will quickly put its new technology to use on the next generational limp for PlayStation visuals.
Sony did not mention what it had paid to bring Cinemersive Labs, which was founded in 2022, in to the fold, but the acquihire will see the team’s crack team come on board.
If you’re interested in what Cinemersive Labs brings to the table, the company explains: “Parallax photos have several distinctive properties. First, they are three-dimensional (aka “six-degrees-of-freedom”) providing correct parallax in response to head motion in VR. This is in contrast to more traditional stereo-photographs (including “spatial photos”) that contain two fixed viewpoints for the two eyes, and therefore do not handle parallax correctly. Stereo-photographs often lead to a nagging discomfort known as cybersickness or VR nausea, especially when they are not confined to a narrow window. This almost never happens with Parallax photos, even when they are viewed immersively at natural scale.
“Secondly, Parallax photos are taken with a single shot capturing a particular moment in time. This is in contrast to photogrammetric reconstruction that provides stunning (and more complete) scene models by processing images taken subsequently from multiple viewpoints. Photogrammetry typically fails to capture moving subjects and objects well. Being based on single shots, Parallax photos successfully capture things that are non-stationary but truly worth capturing: people, animals, vegetation, waves and waterfalls, etc.”
