Auto Safety Tech at a Glance
Washington — With automakers offering an increasing array of safety technologies, it’s hard to stay up to speed with the systems. Some have been around a decade or more but have only become common in the past few years. Others are still available primarily in high-end vehicles. A quick description of some of them: ■ Backup cameras. After a driver shifts into reverse, the camera activates to display what’s behind. The display screen...
GoPro Enters Virtual Reality Market
GoPro is moving into virtual reality with the announcement of a 16-camera, 360-degree array that can capture stereoscopic and spherical video. But this early model is too big to wear on your head. The rig, meant to be mounted on a tripod, has yet to be priced. It will support 16 of GoPro’s Hero4 cameras to record 360-degree video that can be used for virtual reality. It comes integrated with software from Kolor, the virtual reality...
A Cameras-Everywhere Culture
Science fiction writer David Brin calls it “a tsunami of lights” — a future where tiny cameras are everywhere, lighting up everything we do, and even predicting what we’ll do next. Unlike George Orwell’s novel “1984,” where only Big Brother controlled the cameras, in 2015, cheap, mobile technology has turned everyone into a watcher. A snowboarder with a GoPro can post a YouTube video of a friend’s 540-degree McTwist in the halfpipe....
