Back in 2016, Google and IMAX announced a partnership which could have resulted in the development of a VR camera that would allow for movie-grade video capture. Unfortunately it appears that the development on the camera might have been cancelled, according to a report from Variety.The report claims that the camera has been cancelled, although Google has declined to comment while an IMAX spokesperson says that it has not been cancelled, but rather it has been “paused”. The rep said, “We’ve currently paused the development of the Imax VR camera while we continue to review the viability of our pilot program.”
However as Variety notes, this is not what their sources have told them in which the project has actually been cancelled, and that the decision to cancel the project was made by Google. In fact it isn’t even a recent development because their source told them it was actually last year that Google made that decision.
Apparently this is due to a shift in focus where Google wanted to focus more on augmented reality instead of VR. We’re not sure what kind of device would have resulted from this partnership, but we guess we’ll never know. In the meantime it’s not surprising that there is a shift in focus towards AR tech. Games like Pokemon GO have clearly demonstrated that there is a huge market for AR, not to mention that Google’s competitor Apple is also heavily invested in AR.
Filed in . Read more about Digital Cameras, Google, Imax and Virtual Reality (VR).