Ready to create your own professional 360 content? Yes? Great! You’ll need around 30k. Back in April, Facebook announced its Surround 360 camera at F8 and has now released all the schematics one needs to put it together, as well as the software to make it work.
The camera is capable of creating 360 video by putting together video from 17 different cameras that make up its body. The camera’s code is open source and now anyone can have a shot at creating one since it’s available on GitHub. The company also released the schematics for the hardware of the camera – which should cost around $30,000 to build.
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Despite most parts being available on the open market, you will have to put it all together on your own in the end. The top and bottom covers need to be custom-created, so you will need access to some help.
Surround 360 is not something Facebook plans to make money from – at least not at the moment…
[quote]Our mission is to connect the world[/quote]
explained Brian Cabral, the man who led the development of the Surround 360 at Facebook. Sure, but you’d be naive to believe that the company won’t benefit from the democratisation of 360 video technology. It needs to get the technology moving, and people to use it. By making the Surround 360 customisable though, Facebook is encouraging people to innovate. As Cabral adds,
[quote]That’s not only OK, but encouraged[/quote]
At the moment, Surround 360 seems to be the top hardware for the production of VR content (at least according to Facebook). It can of course record 8K video that offers a true 360-degree view. And in case you’re wondering… Yes, you can buy cheaper 360 cameras – but this is the daddy of 360 cameras.
Do you feel like building one? Check it out here.
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