Facebook Surround360 design lands at GitHub

Facebook needs VR content for its Oculus Rift VR headset, so it's made good on its March promise to publish its Surround360 camera design and software. The whole kit and caboodle has landed at GitHub. You'll need your own machinist and around US$30,000 to get started. The company explains here that the kit isn't “a” camera: …

[Douchus McBagg]

you lost me at "facebook"

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Should be able to downscale the camera rig for applications that don't have to capture anything that moves. Like interiors of buildings etc. Syncronisation wouldn't be that critical then.

Hmm. Have to think this through.

[Gene Cash]

No, actually you can't. The number of cameras is dictated by the field of view of each camera and the need to capture the full 360 with some overlap for stitching. The top & bottom cameras may not be needed for your application.

This looks like complete overkill however. I've got a 360 Fly camera that's just one fisheye lens to capture more than a full hemisphere and after processing from fisheye to equirectangular, you've got something that's uploadable to YouTube. It's waterproof and is the size of a tennis ball, and fits on my motorcycle just fine.

There's the Ricoh Theta that's 2 opposed fisheye lenses to get the full globe.

I don't see the need for the 16 cameras, except to skip the fisheye to equirectangular processing. I don't see that being worth the $30K premium.