Orbbec - The never ending chase for Stereo 3D vision!

[Skulpture]

Hi All,

Has anyone been looking at 3D stereo camera solutions lately? The historical timeline for these hardware integrations is a real pain in the a$$! From the kinect V1, then V2, then the (now legacy) orbbec, then came along the real sense, then we had the all singing dancing Azure - but then *boom* gone, some sort of merge with MS and Orbec - dunno the details. I see that Orbbec have the Gemini out now; notably the 336 and 335. [https://www.orbbec.com/product...] These seem new and exciting but not that much support for people like us it seems - artists, educators, installation, theatre, dance - you know what I mean. 

Is there anything else out there at the moment? I feel like it's a gamble - which one is going to be supported by software X and Y, what's the "best". I ask because I have an install with students coming up in December so I am just looking ahead and doing some soft research. 

[bonemap]

@skulpture

Hi,

Great topic for discussion. I can only provide anecdotes from recent purchase history and wishlist thoughts. Earlier this year I created an interactive piece in Isadora for some artists based on OpenNi tracking with an Orbbec Astra Mini- this included purchase of the device. However, the current device available from the Orbbec range of Astra cameras is no longer compatible with OpenNi Tracker in Isadora. I had an original Astra Mini that I could deploy in this case and swapped it. This left me with a new camera that was not usable with Isadora - however compatible with the Orbbec Top now available in Touchdesigner for point cloud and RGB.

I also purchased a second Orbbec Astra Pro - preloved - to add to my legacy kit of OpenNi compatible cameras. This kit is now a couple of Kinect and a couple of Orbbec Astras. Even though these are legacy cameras they are important because they are an IR solution that will work in very low light levels with a functioning OpenNi solution in Isadora. 

The current development in the field of camera based body tracking is amazing and focused on standard RGB video streams. There are now OpenCV solutions for body and skeleton tracking that can be implemented in Isadora using the Pythoner environment. it works very well, but for one big problem, the RGB cameras need lots of light to capture the subject you want to track. If you work in a darkened theatre, black box or gallery where light is being kept to a minimum - then RGB cameras are not very good and OpenCV tracking is severely compromised or just doesn’t work well enough to be viable. 

The new camera systems available from Orbbec address this issue by pairing OpenCV with their IR camera technology. I am unable to review their performance as I have not seen them in action and do not know how they might interface with Isadora.

I would be happy to invest in a camera that has very low light (IR) capability and OpenCV compatibility that can be harnessed in Isadora. I am hoping this combination is not too far off in the future.

Best wishes

Russell