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Now reading: Vuze VR 3D 360 camera targets consumers with $799 price 19 comments

Vuze VR 3D 360 camera targets consumers with $799 price

Published May 25, 2016 | Brittany Hillen

At the Cannes Film Festival, HumanEyes Technologies unveiled the Vuze VR, a consumer-grade 360-degree camera for VR applications. The camera was used to record the recently screened 3D VR short movie Summertime, and is now available to pre-order for $799 USD. In addition to capturing 3D stereoscopic content for VR platforms, Vuze VR can record 360 degree 2D video.

Vuze VR is equipped with eight cameras capable of recording full stereophonic audio and 360-degree Full HD video in both 2D and 3D. Each camera is fitted with lenses that capture a 120 degree FOV horizontally and 180 degree FOV vertically. When the videos are stitched together, the resulting video has a 4K resolution.

The camera is small at 12 x 12 x 3cm (4.7 x 4.7 x 1 in.), and features what HumanEyes calls ‘near real time processing,' with each minute of footage requiring one minute of processing. The camera supports both PCs and Macs, and can be remotely controlled using related iOS and Android apps.

The Vuze VR camera can be pre-ordered now for $799 from the product’s website. Shipping to buyers is estimated to start in October 2016.

Via: PRNewswire

Tags: camera-news, 360-degree, vr

Comments

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nitroman

Looks sharper and better quality than the $60,000 Nokia Ozo ! lol :D

VUZE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaUCxQ7ou3I

OZO : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDbKmdTj8Jc

1 week agopermalink

Melchiorum

Unfortunately, 360' videos suck for now. They look like washed out blurry mess, smeared with compression artifacts. In order to get proper, sharp 360' videos, you would need way more than 4K resolution and very high bit rates and the technology is just not there yet. Once you go beyond 4K, you need powerful processors, gigantic amounts of super-fast storage, etc.

I am sure this technology will evolve, but for now, paying 800 bucks for a proof-of-concept camera that produces borderline unwatchable results is not something I'd do.

1 week ago*permalink

badi

You're kind of wrong... not the tech is the problem. It's just that 4K 360 video is the equivalent of... say 720p footage. People looked for decades on SD television, and a lot still do. So it's not only a proof-of-concept, it's already at a quality level where is consumer ready.

If you make some math... it's a bit difficult, that it depends how the 360video was produces, but for simplification, you can consider that the effective resolution you see at on time, is roughly 1/6th of the footage ... so the *best* in 360 video is equivalent to a 720p normal video (with the normal video still having the advantage of not inducing the distortion required by sphere mapping). Soon it will move up to 8K video, and that would look pretty well even on bigger screens.

Now this camera indeed produces pretty junk footage, but saying that the tech is "not there yet" it's like looking at a phone camera and saying that the photography is... "not there yet" :)

1 week agopermalink

The Squire

@badi 720p may be fine for normal TV viewing but in VR you have your nose to the screen. 720p with agressive compression looks pretty poor.

Vuze is still a really good step in the right direction. 4K 3D 360 at a reasonable price, it fills the gap between the 360 toy cameras and high end rigs or multi-cam set-ups used by the pros.

If I get any VR kit in the next 12 months, this may be a necessary purchase!

1 week agopermalink

Melchiorum

@badi
When I say that tech is "not there yet", I mean consumer grade tech of course. Sure you can stich a setup of several 4K cams with fisheye lens and record the 16K or something video on a RAID of SSDs, but that's the whole other story. And your system wouldn't be able to handle that video anyway.

Your analogies are all over the place, sorry. Yes, people watched SD TV and some still do. Well, that does not mean we need to invest in SD cameras today.
Phone camera analogy is also wrong. Phone cameras are amazing today for what they do and that's why point'n'shoot cam market is pretty much dead.

Consumer 360' are crap at what they do. They target the VR market while producing a mess of a picture. Even the best of the 4K 360' cams produce video footage that's nowhere near as good as a classic 1080p and in VR it still looks not that great.

Sure, there are uber-expensive rigs that can produce an OK 360' video, but that is whole other story.

1 week agopermalink

cainn24

We rely on the early adoption of immature technologies so we can figure out how best to climb out of babyland and get to all the good stuff. So I personally hope that relatively large numbers of people are willing to take it for what it is now, and try to have some fun with it, so that when the technology improves to the point that it has a legitimate blow-your-mind wow-factor we can all hit the ground running.

1 week agopermalink

Biowizard

FFS - 360 degree images is NOTHING to do with true VR, an altogether more immersive experience. All that a "360 degree" image is, is where the Photographer abandoned all and any attempt at framing and composition.

Enough already - this misinformation is damaging our art.

Brian

1 week ago*permalink

Mark Banas

Thanks for sharing... I'm sure the manufacturers and press will stop now, just like they did with "HDR" and "3D."

1 week agopermalink

Ran Plett

Mark, I originally interpreted that as sarcastic. Are you being sarcastic or not? ;)

1 week agopermalink

Mark Banas

@Ran Plett: Sarcastic from experience. I've worked with 3D computer graphics (not just stereo photos or video) for 30 years, and 32-bit High Dynamic Range imagery (not just 8-bit tonemapped images) for 20 years, and even played with Brian's preferred version of VR in the early 90's at the UIC EVL.

This "VR" "3D" "camera" might even shoot "HDR," but none of my expertise has been diluted by popular semantics.

1 week agopermalink

noflashplease

Having lived through the short-lived VR craze of the 1990s, I can honestly say that this current VR revival might not last as long as the protracted development of the Oculus Rift VR headset. Is it out, yet? I guess. Do I still care? I'm not sure I ever did.

This little 360 degree camera looks decided cheap to manufacture for the $800 asking price. Profit much? Just wait for the clearance sale for this sort of gimmicky gadget.

1 week agopermalink

Melchiorum

Having also lived through the short-lived VR craze of the 1990s, I can honestly say that today's VR has extremely little to do with that unusable gimmicky crap. Literally, the only common thing is the term "virtual reality".

It really bugs me when people say something like "oh yeah, VR failed in 90s, so it will fail now too". It didn't fail in 90s, because this technology didn't even exist then and there were never good, working, compact devices that offered it. It's like saying "Tesla will fail, because no one wanted electric cars in the 00s".

1 week ago*permalink

badi

Melchiorum, very true that.
But sometimes even the same idea can have a completely different impact 1-2 decades later. Take the tablet - bill gates introduced the concept some 10+ years before apple, and it just didn't work. The idea was good, realization OK, it's just it didn't work. Later, when apple introduced it, it was a big hit - not because of the design, and bla bla, it's just that at that moment the public was ready for it. And of course there was already face book :))

1 week agopermalink

James Benet

The VR of the 90s is nothing like the VR today, it is now a fully workable technology that can be used for a variety of applications. Next generation will be higher res and more immersive. I have tried the current gen and the 90s gen and there is no comparison. VR is here to stay, as for VR video who knows if it will ever take off for shooters. VR is better in fully rendered and alterable environments.

1 week agopermalink

WebmasterNeal

Facebook is going to support 360 images in the next month and already support 360 videos. Google Maps, Flickr also support them along with many VR headsets. 360 images will become much more popular as more and more apps and websites support the display of them.

1 week agopermalink

M1963

We can tell how popular VR is by the number of comments to this entry so far: a mammoth 4! (and that includes mine.)

1 week agopermalink

Ran Plett

3D photography and videography really took off too, right? They have their niches, but I think people want to consume simpler media so that they can consume more of it. That being said, I'm watching the space in case it actually does take off. You never know...

1 week agopermalink

66GTO

The Summertime trailer was unimpressive to say the least. Much improvement needed to be a real successful product.

1 week agopermalink

webber15

My two Bob's worth...

Are these 360° and panoramic camera's a bit pointless...many new ones released yet not many people actually use them??
Or...am I wrong??

1 week agopermalink

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