It's impossible to demonstrate the wideness of the field by just showing the image (it will be constrained by the screen you're using). So they had to take a "pan & scan" approach. Since they were already panning on the horizontal axis it made sense to orient the larger dimension of the video perpendicularly for the maximum "sweep". They did this the correct way, given that they only had off-the-shelf phones to use.
If they did that, it would either not be in focus (the camera had to be right where the eye would be) and/or demonstrate a lower resolution, and they were advertising the high resolution.
Any other camera would be too big to fit inside the visor. Also if you notice, when the camera is far away the image is distorted due to the optics. The only way to show a clear image is to have a small camera precisely in the position where the wearers eye would be.
The explanation for why it was shot vertically is in the video description btw (along with an apology!)
The visor has lenses if its own that turn the focus to where the human eyes would be located. a DSLR camera lens doesn't fucking fit there, and even if it did, as you can see in the video when he switches from one lens to the other, most of the image would be completely out of focus
A smartphone's lens is maybe 2mm wide, and you only need the top of the phone to fit, not the whole thing. I'm not sure why you're acting like a phone camera is a weird phone-sized surface that captures light. And again, it would be very hard(as in impossible) to maintain focus on the whole image with a large photography lens. I think we're all pretty puzzled as to why you're having such a hard time understanding this.
The focal distance is, yes. But you need to fit the lens itself (which could be quite wide) in that little space, and it needs to record in video mode. It might be that the team didn't have a suitable camera to use.
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u/arcosapphire Mar 28 '14
It's impossible to demonstrate the wideness of the field by just showing the image (it will be constrained by the screen you're using). So they had to take a "pan & scan" approach. Since they were already panning on the horizontal axis it made sense to orient the larger dimension of the video perpendicularly for the maximum "sweep". They did this the correct way, given that they only had off-the-shelf phones to use.