This article was published on April 12, 2016

Facebook’s ‘Surround 360’ is a $30k camera that shoots 360 video in 8k resolution


Facebook’s ‘Surround 360’ is a $30k camera that shoots 360 video in 8k resolution

It’s no secret that Facebook has gone all-in on virtual reality. But if you had, for just a moment, lost sight of that fact its new ‘Surround 360’ camera should put things back into perspective for you.

Today at F8, Facebook announced its Surround 360 camera, a 17-lens 3D VR rig that looks like ‘Gravitron‘ but shoots top-notch 360 degree video. All told, its 17 4-megapixel lenses can shoot in resolution up to 8k and each individual layer acts as a built-in heatsink.

Surround 360 requires almost zero of the post-production effort of most VR rigs, assuming you’re willing to do a little work upfront and shell out the $30,000 for parts.

If that sounds like you, Facebook has said it’ll post the hardware design and video stitching algorithms on GitHub later this summer.

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The rig is actually comparable to Google’s ‘Jump’ project, but we’re lacking a few details to determine which would be the better bargain.

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