Facebook is getting into the 360-degree camera business.
At its annual F8 developer conference, the company unveiled the Surround 360, its own custom-built camera for shooting 360-degree video. The Surround 360 has 17 "globally synced" camera lenses (14 wide-angle lenses around the horizontal ring and three fisheye lenses on the top and bottom) that capture 360-degree video in up to 8K resolution.
"The 8K output utilizes our dynamic streaming code, doubling the industry standard," explains a narrator in a demo video (below).
The footage can, of course, be viewed in VR headsets like the Gear VR and Oculus Rift.
A web interface is used to control the camera's settings, such as the shutter, aperture, etc. Facebook says the camera can run for hours without overheating thanks to its aluminum design.
The camera's software automatically stitches the footage from the 17 cameras together to "dramatically reduce the post-production time."
Facebook says the Surround 360 is the best commercial VR camera ever created. The camera design and stitching code will be open-sourced and available on GitHub this summer.