Rumor: Google is in the process of acquiring Lytro
Google is rumored to be in the process of acquiring Lytro, a company known for its light field cameras and virtual reality company. It is unclear what stage the acquisition is currently at.
TechCruch spoke to several anonymous sources who say Google is interested in Lytro. They mention different amounts. For example, one source cites $40 million and another an amount of $25 million. It would be an asset sale, which includes the Lytro patents in the field of light field technology. A third source says not all employees are moving to Google. It is unclear what the search giant wants to achieve with the purchase, according to TechCrunch.
The site points out that Google recently released software on Steam under the name Welcome to Light Fields. In it, users can look around in VR scenes that Google has captured using a special camera setup. Lytro itself presented its so-called Immerge platform for creating VR videos in 2015. The company used its light field technique for this, in which all light rays are recorded.
The device used to record the images is equipped with hundreds of light field modules, which record where the light hits a surface and where it is reflected. For example, a scene can be reassembled afterwards from different points of view and some freedom of movement is possible for the viewer. In 2011, Lytro announced its first light field camera, which made it possible to focus afterwards. Three years later, the Illum camera came out as a successor. These cameras were not a great success and at the beginning of 2015 Lytro focused on Fri.
In 2016, the company introduced a Cinema light field camera for film productions, which should be able to convert every frame into a three-dimensional scene. In that year, Lytro announced that it would stop selling consumer cameras. Last October it came out with Volume Tracer. That is rendering software for vr content. This should allow 6dof freedom of movement while preserving the quality of a rendered environment. Lytro was founded in 2006 under the name Refocus Imaging.