Facebook unveiled the Surround 360 camera at their annual F8 Facebook developer conference Tuesday. The social networking giant designed the camera so that minimal post processing would be needed after the fact, a feature that Facebook hopes will bring more and more 360-degree videos to their social networking platforms.
Facebook is planning on releasing the Surround 360 as open source, both in terms of software and hardware, sometime this summer. While it will still cost $30,000 to assemble the 17 different fish eye cameras — including 14 on the sides, 1 at the top and 2 on the bottom — and aluminum housing, none of that money will be going to Facebook.
The Surround 360 will be capable of writing 360-footage directly to disk via USB connections, and support resolutions up to 8K. The coolest feature of all however, is split between the Surround 360’s global shutter, which takes care of the rolling shutter problem, and the two bottom cameras, which makes the pole holding the camera up disappear.
According to Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, all he wants to be able to do is record his daughter’s first steps with a 360 degree camera. If his hopes come true, then he may decide to broadcast the moment through Facebook Live, which just received its own dedicated tab on the social networking platform.
The Facebook Live API has been opened up for dedicated physical cameras, so people won’t depend on on iPhones to be able to live stream video, as well to drones and other devices. The Phantom drone for example will now be able to stream directly to Facebook after a firmware update in the near future. Before, the drone could livestream to YouTube and its chinese equivalent.
“Say hello to my little drone friend” is what Zuckerberg should have said. #F8 pic.twitter.com/umpBxtkmd9
— Niv Dror ☄ (@Nivo0o0) April 12, 2016
