Facebook's New 360 Degree Cam Just Changed The Way We Shoot Video, Oh And It's Yours For Free!
A 360-degree stereoscopic 3D video camera set to launch this summer that can be a total game changer.
Things might just change completely for professionals working in video productions and other video enthusiasts. Known as Facebook Surround360, this black camera, circular in shape, consists of 17 evenly shaped lenses helping you shoot 360 degreee footage for both VR (virtual reality) headsets or normal smartphones, notebooks, tablets and smart TVs. Taking shooting live action video to another level altogether.
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That's not it. This camera, that looks a lot like a tiny UFO, is an open source. Which means Facebook will be giving away both the camera¡¯s hardware designs and the one-of-a-kind software that completes the three-dimensional landscapes for absolutely free!
¡°We care a lot about kickstarting and inspiring the overall ecosystem as much as we can,¡± says Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox as Facebook takes the first big step into the world of virtual reality.
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This isn't the first of its kind though
When compared to Google's 360 videos on Youtube, Cox feels this product is a few notches above them with not only the design, but because it's also open to all. ¡°We do not have ambitions of getting into the camera business,¡± he says. ¡°But we did observe that there wasn¡¯t really a great reference camera that took really nice, high-resolution, 3D, fully spherical video.¡±
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They have competition
Having spoken about the positives, there are a few areas of concern though. Parts of Surround360 are substantially higher (almost twice as much) than the GoPro Odyssey, a 360-degree video rig that GoPro built with Google. Even though the Surround360 has three fish-eye lenses on top and bottom making it a truly spherical experience for the one shooting.
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A massive step towards making virtual reality mainstream
Facebook engineer Brian Cabral says the aim was to create a camera that¡¯s not only capable of high-resolution spherical video but also durable and easy to use. ¡°You can treat it like an ordinary camera,¡± Cabral says. ¡°You plug it in. You hit record. You get a big data file out. And it somehow gets turned into a seamless video, just like you would with any video camera.¡±
The more important point, however, is that Facebook has vowed to share the designs with the world at large. Cox says that come the summer, the company will share both the hardware schematics and the software on GitHub, the primary home for open source projects on the ¡®net. Facebook hopes that others will not only manufacture and sell the device but modify it in myriad ways¡ªproduce entirely new types of cameras from the basic designs.
The real break-through is still the fact that this is an open-source platform. And because of this, Facebook hopes designers could transform this into a consumer device. ¡°With any good open source project, you don¡¯t always take the whole thing,¡± Cox says. ¡°Usually, there¡¯s a piece in there that solves a problem so that you don¡¯t have to go solve it.¡± All the parts can be found on the Internet.
The video is becoming the main medium of communication and Facebook understands that videos will be powering the future of social networking. We are very excited.
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Football, films and food are the three words to describe Rishabh. A complete movie and sitcom buff, he can spend days in front of the television watching his favourite films, TV shows and the greatest football team in the world - Chelsea. He doesn't believe in getting out of bed unless he absolutely has to. Much like his face, he likes to write on everything funny, obscure, and nonsensical the world has to offer. He believes travelling is the best way to learn anything, and can happily play FIFA all night long. ?A creature of the night, Rishabh is also a firm believer that the solution to all life¡¯s problems is Batman
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