Vuze VR camera aims to give you high-end 360 video for only $800
There's a small lie that's snowballing into a huge lie when it comes to 360-degree videos and virtual reality.
You see, with the rise of VR, there's been an inevitable rush to produce content for it. People want stuff to watch in their expensive VR headsets, and many content creators and companies are arguably misleading consumers with 360-degree videos (and cameras that shoot 360-degree videos).
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Yes, most 360-degree videos are viewable in a VR headset and allow for omnidirectional viewing experiences, but they aren't real VR. They're still just flat 2D videos with no depth to them.
But after taking a look at several 360-degree videos shot with the Vuze, I'm now convinced that for any content to be classified truly as VR content, it needs to have 3D stereoscopic depth.
HumanEyes' Vuze is an $800 VR camera that's slightly larger than a Roku or Apple TV media streaming box. Unlike other 360-degree cameras that are mistakenly referred to as "VR cameras" that only have one or two spherical lenses, the Vuze has eight cameras -- two on each of its four edges. Each camera records in full HD.
"We're actually delivering the same experiences as a 3D camera that's $30,000 or $60,000," Shahar Bin-Nun, CEO of HumanEyes, tells Mashable. Bin-Nun is, of course, comparing the Vuze's VR video recording capabilities to Facebook's $30,000 Surround 360 VR camera and Nokia's $60,000 Ozo VR camera.
With the click of a button, the camera records 360-degree video that can be rendered in 2D and 3D for viewing in a VR headset.
Videos with depth
With 3D, 360-degree videos have depth to them.
3D 360-degree videos are what makes the Vuze stand out. With 3D, the videos have depth to them. In one 3D 360-degree video I watched via the Vuze, the railing on a balcony popped out. In another one, filmed at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the throngs of people holding candles looked more alive.
Though the 3D 360-degree videos I saw looked really good and felt far more immersive and realistic than 2D 360-degree videos shot with consumer 360-degree cameras like Samsung's Gear 360 and LG's 360 Cam, footage from the Vuze isn't prone to inducing nausea.
In one 3D 360-degree video where a guy was holding the Vuze attached to a selfie stick and walking down a corridor, the 3D effect gave me a slight headache as I turned my head in all directions and the depth became too much for me to handle.
"We're competing for quality," says Bin-Nun. And for the most part, the Vuze delivers. I could barely see any of the usual "stitch lines" or "seams" other 360-degree camera footage suffer from. The 4K resolution 3D 360-degree videos looked pretty sharp.
Convincing immersive visuals are only one part of the VR content equation. Audio is key as well, particularly 3D spatial sound.
"The audio -- this is the only part we don't have our own proprietary technology," Bin-Nun says. "We are in the middle of the integration of a 3D 360-degree audio solution. We already have the ability to capture the audio in the camera -- four microphones in each direction -- but after getting this captured audio you need to work on it with software to maximize the 360-degree effect for the multidirectional audio effect."
The Vuze camera comes with 64GB of internal storage. There's also a microSD card slot for adding more storage, which is good, because you may need it. Every minute of video recorded with the Vuze takes up 1GB of storage, which means the camera can only record up to 64 minutes of footage.
The internal battery is good for up to one hour of continuous recording. You can, however, connect a battery pack via the Micro USB to extend the battery life.
Inevitably, people are going to want to record VR video in extreme conditions like with action cameras. For those cases, the Vuze is splash-proof. The company's also designing a special case for underwater usage. Bin-Nun told me the waterproof case would be pretty big.
Most companies would be happy to simply sell you a camera, but HumanEyes is including an entire package. The Vuze camera will come with a tripod that folds into a short selfie stick, a plastic VR headset by Homido, a small pair of foldable VR "glasses" also by Homido, the Vuze Studio software and a protective case.
Dumb-proof usability
Having tested several 360-degree cameras like the Ricoh Theta, I can tell you that recording 360-degree videos is easy. Just press the record button. Getting the videos off these cameras and rendering them out into different formats for uploading online can be a real pain in the ass since all of them use their own proprietary software.
"We wanted to make it really dumb-proof, so that anyone can generate 3D 360-degree virtual reality video."
"We wanted to make it really dumb-proof, so that anyone can generate 3D 360-degree virtual reality video," says Bin-Nun. "With just one click of the button, you connect the cable [to a computer], a screen pops up with an 'import' button that copies the eight videos (one from each camera) and behind the scenes, it stitches the [VR video]."
A Vuze spokesperson further explained the exporting process. "You put in which headset it's going to, which platform it's going to, and the output will be maximized for that specific [device and platform]." It'll take one minute to download one minute of VR video from the Vuze to your computer.
I didn't get to see the Vuze Studio software, but Bin-Nun said he's hoping to have it available within the next couple of months.
Not being greedy
I only got a small glimpse of some footage and I didn't get to try out the camera and see real recorded footage directly from it, but if footage from actual consumer cameras looks as good as the sample 3D 360-degree videos, the Vuze could be a huge value when it's released in October.
"We are very proud of what we've been able to reach in two years with the Vuze camera," says Bin-Nun. "It took us a long time to determine the right size, the right configuration, what [are] the specs for each camera. We wanted to minimize the number of cameras but still maintain a good 3D effect -- not too much because it makes people dizzy and not too little."
When asked how HumanEyes is able to deliver such a high-resolution VR camera at a tiny fraction of the cost of say a GoPro-ed together VR rig or Facebook's $30,000 VR camera, Bin-Nun isn't shy about how his company's doing it.
"We are less greedy than others," says Bin-Nun. "We said we will have smaller margins before we do any cost reductions. We will not be profitable (laughs), uh, a lot or almost at all. If we could have sold it at $600, we would have. But right now this is what we can do. Hopefully in the future we can make it more affordable."
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Topics Virtual Reality Cameras
Raymond Wong is Mashable's Senior Tech Correspondent. He reviews gadgets and tech toys and analyzes the tech industry. Raymond's also a bit of a camera geek, gamer, and fine chocolate lover. Before arriving at Mashable, he was the Deputy Editor of NBC Universal's tech publication DVICE. His writing has appeared on G4TV, BGR, Yahoo and Ubergizmo, to name a few. You can follow Raymond on Twitter @raywongy or Instagram @sourlemons.
