3D video startup raises millions to make movies for Oculus Rift

Newsbrief: The burgeoning popularity of the Oculus Rift is driving VR development beyond the bounds of games. Re/code reports today that Jaunt, a startup company that was founded last year as a developer of tools to capture and display video in 360 degrees, has raised $6.8 million to tackle the challenge of developing movies for virtual reality. “We have to invent a whole new language of storytelling for this medium,” Jaunt CTO Arthur van Hoff told Re/code. “That’s actually one of the more interesting parts of this project, the technology to drive this. But the content part is something that we need to invent as well.” The report attempts to describe a demo of what Jaunt is working on -- video footage for the Oculus Rift that allows the viewer to look around the scene by rotating their head. The footage is shot with a stationary, spherical camera studded with lenses and microphones, allowing it to capture 3D stereoscopic video and audio in a nearly 360 degree arc. Jaunt's rendering software is cross-platform and can create video for the Oculus Rift or other VR headsets, though the company has reportedly only worked with the Oculus Rift so far.