Facebook announces "Surround 360" that can make VR video with no peripheral blind spots with 17 8K compatible cameras

Although the VR market is exciting as a result of the advent of full-fledged VR headsets such as Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, in order to further enhance the contents, a tool to easily create VR images is necessary. Facebook with Oculus is a VR camera system to provide hardware and software that can be easily created by anyone with its own initiative and can easily create transcended VR images compatible with 8K "Surround 360We announced.

Facebook 360 Updates and introducing Surround 360 | Facebook Media
https://media.fb.com/2016/04/12/facebook-360-updates/

Introducing Facebook Surround 360: An open, high-quality 3D-360 video capture system | Engineering Blog | Facebook Code
https://code.facebook.com/posts/1755691291326688/introducing-facebook-surround-360-an-open-high-quality-3d-360-video-capture-system

You can understand what kind of camera the VR camera system "Surround 360" that Facebook advocates for VR video capture in a single movie by seeing the following movie.

Facebook Surround 360

VR camera system "Facebook Surround 360" proposed by Facebook for VR video capture


Cameras are sliding in housings designed to be used in harsh environments such as deserts.


On the circumference, 14 fisheye lenses with built-in 1 inch sensor with built-in lens with F value of 2.4 · wide angle of 77 degrees mounted on the top, 2 on the top and 2 fish-eye lenses are installed, and a total of 17 8 K compatible cameras powered by. Because the image of 8K correspondence is shot with 17 cameras, the video bit rate is 17 Gpbs at 30 Hz.


It covers completely up to the sky with a top camera.


Movement is also OK with a dedicated stand. Cover up to the ground with two cameras mounted on the bottom. Since the image is processed by software, it is possible to shoot VR images without blind spots that the stand does not appear on the synthesized VR image.


According to Facebook, a high-performance VR camera is indispensable for creating content for VR headsets such as Oculus Rift, and so far there were no cameras that can easily capture high quality VR images. So, Facebook is "Surround 360" developed to provide hardware and software in open source. Facebook does not sell the camera system, the above hardware can be purchased from camera manufacturers and parts manufacturers, and the set price is 30,000 dollars (about 3.3 million yen). Of course it is OK for third parties to sell products that conform to Surround 360 system standards.

Not only powerful camera hardware capable of shooting VR images compatible with 8K, Surround 360 is also powerful software. The shot image can be synthesized without any special editing operation, and the whole surrounding can be seamlessly joined smoothly to make it a real VR image. Since Facebook is planning to release Surround 360 software as open source in GitHub in July 2016, anyone can use this software to create transcendent VR video.

With Surround 360 you can easily create VR movies for smartphones that can be played on smartphone type VR headset "Gear VR" as well.

Facebook believes VR will be the next generation killer content,Acquisition of Oculus of VR headset "Rift" at about 200 billion yendoing. In order to disseminate VR content, it is necessary to have good VR video, and by lending himself "Surround 360" led by Facebook itself, we are preparing to create a content production environment and promote the spread of VR contents at once.