This is Facebook's gorgeous, open-source 360-degree video camera

This is Facebook's gorgeous, open-source 360-degree video camera

Hoping to badly access the bulk of 360-degree video on its platform, Facebook today apparent a advertence architecture for a high-end video abduction arrangement and appear affairs to absolution it as an open-source activity on GitHub. Shaped like a aerial saucer, Facebook Surround 360 uses a 17-camera arrangement and accompanying web-based software to abduction images in 360 degrees and cede them automatically. Facebook says the architecture solves a array of abstruse problems with 360-degree video abduction bigger than annihilation now on the market, and is auspicious manufacturers and hobbyists to use its designs to body cameras of their own.

The rig includes 14 wide-angle cameras anchored assimilate the aerial saucer, additional one fish-eye camera on top and two added on the bottom. This allows the accessory to abduction the ambience after assuming the pole captivation up the camera, a accepted botheration actuality in the aboriginal canicule of 360-degree video. The cameras use what is accepted as a all-around bang instead of a rolling one, which ensures the consistent footage does not affectation artifacts from the closing of alone shutters. In a abrupt affirmation Monday at Facebook headquarters, video captured through Surround 360 appeared to be brittle and seamless, with no flaws arresting in the footage. (On the added hand, Samsung Gear VR, which I acclimated to watch the demo, charcoal a chapped and sub-optimal way to appearance this blazon of footage.)

The best camera of its kind, according to Facebook

Facebook is accession Surround 360 as the best-designed camera of its kind, acknowledgment to chip accouterments and software advised by the aggregation to plan in harmony. The accessory can plan for "many hours" after overheating, and exports video in resolution up to 8K. It can be beheld on Gear VR, Oculus, and central the Facebook app, a part of added places. "There's something about how high-quality the acquaintance is that anon makes you accept in 360 film," said Chris Cox, arch artefact administrator at Facebook, in an account with reporters Monday.

Making 360-degree cameras is added a antecedence for tech companies, and they've amorphous architecture both bargain accessories for consumers and high-end models for Hollywood. On the lower end of the spectrum, 360 activity cameras accept been appear by Nikon and GoPro. On the top end, GoPro aswell congenital a $15,000, 16-camera VR rig in a accord with Google called Odyssey; it went on auction in September. And endure summer Nokia apparent Ozo, a next-generation 360 camera aimed at able filmmakers. The device, which will advertise for $60,000, began shipment endure month. The cameras are advised to accredit a new bearing of filmmaking, which tech companies are action will be captivated on basic absoluteness headsets.

"My ambition is to put myself out of a job."

It costs $30,000 to buy the abstracts all-important to body a Surround 360, Facebook says. Plan on the activity began about a year ago as Facebook began to captivate about bringing added video to the feed. Cox says Facebook has no absorption in acceptable a camera manufacturer. Brian Cabral, a administrator of engineering who led the project, says, "My ambition is to put myself out of a job."

But Cabral will accept to authority on a while best — Facebook will not put the open-source designs on Github until ancient this summer. Until then, filmmakers can appraise the assorted options they accept for capturing video in 360 degrees, and adjudge for themselves how Facebook's architecture holds up.

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