Google I/O 2017: Seurat is the new technology that will bring cinematic VR to mobile

Google demonstrated a new technology that the company is working on to bring cinematic high-end, film-quality 3D scenes to Mobile. This new technology is known as ‘Seurat’ and the company has named the technology behind a great French painter. The interesting part about this technology is that it uses ‘clever tricks’ to achieve desktop or console-level graphics using the mobile GPU that is packed in smartphones.

Google has teamed up with ILMxLAB, a branch of Lucasfilm that is focused on bringing next generation of immersive experiences to the mobile VR headset. The branch worked with Google to bring ‘cinema-quality’, high-fidelity scenes from Rogue One to the mobile during the demo. [caption id=“attachment_377291” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  Image Credit: Google[/caption] ILMxLAB detailed that it compressed all the shapes and textures present in a scene to be projected in a VR scene. Each frame in the original scene took about an hour to render while there the scene is rendered in seconds on mobile hardware. [caption id=“attachment_377182” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  Image Credit: Google[/caption] The scene integrated real-time reflections and lighting effects along with the animated K-2 to run on the prototype WorldSense headset. According to a report by The Verge, the technology works by taking renders on an environment from different angles and positions and mapping them on a ‘low-polygon’ scene to present a decent VR scene. It is unclear at this point about how much processing capacity the prototype WorldSense headset comes with but we can expect it to be near what current mobile smartphones pack without the additional components required for cellular connectivity.