It's also highly unlikely that GoPro's pricey rigs will convince many mainstream consumers to buy six or 16 cameras at once.įacebook's decision to open source Surround 360 isn't really aimed at GoPro's core business. Analysts believe that GoPro's sales will fall 15% this year, compared to 16% growth last year, due to sluggish demand for action cameras and tough headwinds in the drone market. It teased a "more casual" spherical camera at CES in January, but it's unclear when that device will actually arrive. These cheaper cameras can't produce video on par with the Odyssey, but they have a better chance of winning over mainstream consumers with their lower price tags.įor now, GoPro is using rigs to tread water until its Karma drone and Hero 5 devices arrive later this year. Over the past year, plenty of rival companies have revealed cheaper stand-alone spherical cameras, such as Ricoh 's Theta S, which costs $350, and JK Imaging's Kodak PixPro SP360-4K, which costs $500. The key problem with GoPro's strategy is that it's just using rigs to sell more action cameras, instead of developing new stand-alone cameras for capturing 360-degree content.
The Odyssey relies on YouTube's Jump platform, and the Omni works with Kolor, the spherical video app which GoPro acquired last April. The hardware in the rig synchronizes the feeds to enable them to be stitched together with software. GoPro's 360-degree solutions, the 16-camera Odyssey and the six-camera Omni, are powered by its own Hero 4 Black cameras.
This major difference could trigger a major shift in the high-end spherical camera market, and it could hit GoPro the hardest. But the key difference here is that Facebook is sharing its design with everyone, while GoPro, Nokia, and other rivals aren't. It costs more than GoPro 's ( GPRO) $15,000 Odyssey, but it still costs less than Nokia 's ( NOK -0.21%) $60,000 Ozo. That sounds like an ambitious plan, but with a price tag of $30,000, the Surround 360 still isn't priced for mainstream consumers. It could also deliver VR videos to the Oculus Rift headset or send live 360-degree videos to the News Feed. The invitation is clearly aimed at generating more interactive 360-degree videos, which Facebook added to its News Feed last year. Image source: Facebook.įacebook claims that the design solves various technical problems current rigs have, and will upload the designs this summer to encourage hobbyists and companies to create their own cameras.
The cameras use a global shutter instead of a rolling one, which means that the footage doesn't display any artifacts from individual shutters closing.įacebook's Surround 360.
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14 wide-angle cameras are bolted around the circular rig, and a fish-eye camera on the top and two others on the bottom help capture a full spherical view.
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The 17-camera rig lets users capture video in 360-degrees and use web-based software to automatically render the videos. Facebook ( META 0.03%) recently unveiled Surround 360, a reference design for a high-end 360-degree video camera.
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