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Facebook Announces 'Surround 360' Open Source VR Camera (popsci.com)
Facebook is getting even more serious about 360-degree videos and content. At its developer conference, the social juggernaut announced the Surround 360, a 17-lens 3D VR camera. It's not available commercially yet. but the company has opened the design for anyone to modify. All the parts can be bought later this summer for about $30,000. Popular Science reports: The hardware is also coupled with custom software that automatically stitches together the immense amount of high-resolution video the camera records, and permits wireless control of the camera. "We care a lot about just kickstarting and inspiring the ecosystem as much as we can," said Chris Cox, chief product officer at Facebook. While the company isn't manufacturing or selling the cameras, Cox says the team sees it as a high-end "reference camera" that the rest of the community could base their designs on. According to Cox, making VR video breaks down into three steps: capture, processing, and delivery. Facebook already has a clear advantage in the delivery of this content, so now the plan is to break down the barriers for capture and processing.Also at the conference, Facebook announced it was opening up Live Video feature to developers. This would allow developers to integrate live streaming into third-party apps and also stream from any device.
It can't be turned off and streams everything to facebook's servers. Also, they own the video not you.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
... for tech thats not a whole lot more than a cellphone + 15 Cameras??
Here's a list of reasons why I don't like the Internet of Things:
1) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I sleep.
2) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I pee.
3) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I make kaka.
4) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I pleasure myself.
5) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I wash my body in the shower.
6) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I relax in the tub.
7) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I brush my teeth.
8) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I make passionate love to my wife.
9) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I brush my hair.
10) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I read a book.
11) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I read Slashdot.
12) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I bake cake.
13) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I put in my contact lenses.
14) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I get ready to play golf.
15) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I do my laundry.
16) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I think about rugby.
17) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I tie my shoes.
18) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I celebrate the 4th of July.
19) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I water my flowers.
20) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I eat ham.
21) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I use my stapler to staple documents.
22) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I chew bubble gum.
23) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I check the oil in my car.
24) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I look for my TV remote.
25) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I blow my nose.
26) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I rearrange my stamp collection.
27) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I listen to the Backstreet Boys.
28) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I do my calisthenics.
29) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I search for a paper clip.
30) Internet of Things devices could send information about me to advertisers.
31) Internet of Things devices could let advertisers use the data unsuspectingly collected about me while I sleep.
32) Internet of Things devices could let advertisers use the data unsuspectingly collected about me while I pee.
33) Internet of Things devices could let advertisers use the data unsuspectingly collected about me while I make kaka.
34) Internet of Things devices could let advertisers use the data unsuspectingly collected about me while I pleasure myself.
35) Internet of Things devices could let advertisers use the data unsuspectingly collected about me while I wash my body in the shower.
36) Internet of Things devices could let advertisers use the data unsuspectingly collected about me while I relax in the tub.
37) Internet of Things devices could let advertisers use the data unsuspectingly collected about me while I brush my teeth.
38) Internet of Things devices could let advertisers use the data unsuspectingly collected about me while I make passionate love to my wife.
39) Internet of Things devices could let advertisers use the data unsuspectingly collected about me while I brush my hair.
40) Internet of Things devices could let advertisers use the data unsuspectingly collected about me while I read a book.
41) Internet of Things devices could let advertisers use the data unsuspectingly collected about me while I read Slashdot.
42) Internet of Things devices could let advertisers use the data unsuspectingly collected about me while I bake cake.
43) Internet of Things devices could let advertisers use the data unsuspectingly coll
God bless scripting languages.
Anyhow; the Internet at large would be immeasurably improved if Facebook users are able to watch you do all these things.
Requiem for the American Dream
In Soviet Amerika, Facebook looks at YOU!
Looks designed for panoramic minions to look all around but not ever up or down
you seem to be scratching ur ass. I think I as a bot have a duty to spam u with hemorrhoid cream ads and alert your friends with a live feed while they play games on occulus rift.
I'm tired of reading about Facebook here. When did /. become a clearinghouse for Facebook news?
$30k is way too much for what it is, considering how much competition there is in this area. There are solutions coming to market soon (or already available) for far less. First google result: panono for 1500Euros, which uses 36 cameras. There are many others.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
information be it text, audio, video , etc, are not worth much by themselves.
everyone of us have feeds of them constantly bombarding our brains naturally. to be valuable information need to be edited and focused.
a movie is worth watching only when all the tedious stuff is edited out. truly honest reality show would be boring(without effort). novel that records everything would not be a novel, authors focus(even when they do stream of consciousness). poem or symphony wont be worth much without structure even when some of them impossibly claim to be without structure. etc.
eyes( and ears, other senses, etc ) have evolved to precisely to enable us to extract useful information by focusing within a limited field.
studies have shown very act of editing and structuring information make it useful. for instance taking actual notes of a lecture, help us remember it(even if we do not read notes again ), more than watching a video of the lecture many times.
while expansion of technology is good and should not be curbed, we must be aware that creating streams of information without conscious editing, without focus, will only create ever more worthless useless information.
Open
> "17-lens 3D VR camera"
Nonononono. It's a 360 degree VR camera. It is *not* also 3d. I don't think anyone has one of those yet, right? It would be difficult to get both omnidirectional *AND* binocular(i.e. 3D) in the same design.
I wonder if something like the Lytro tech would help with that...
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Facebook: Eradicating privacy since 2003. It seems like the purpose of Facebook is to eradicate privacy, wherever it may be.
360 degree video would't be much use for porn unless you dropped the camera in the middle of a group sex orgy or something. In most porn, all the action is happening in one spot. You might want multi-angle video where you can view the action from different locations (also useful for sports footage, dance instruction videos and other stuff), but that's completely different to 360 degree video that lets you look in any direction from a single location.
http://petapixel.com/2015/05/28/the-google-jump-360-camera-rig-uses-16-gopros/
That is hardly an "open source" camera.
All they have done on the hardware side is stick a bunch of point grey camera units in a circular holder.
Of course it is going to be expensive!
Point grey cameras are indeed convenient for testing, but are not suitable for this at all.
A $15 image sensor results in a ~$300 pointgrey camera (not including a lens, which is needed either way).
It could be made a LOT more inexpensive by actually designing the hardware like they implied.
I wonder how much it would be for 4 steradians.
Place all the video screens of the porncam cameras in the studio in a sphere, all facing a single point. Place the 360 degree camera at the center. Now you get a full recording of the action from every direction.