During the Mobile World Congress, Mark Zuckerberg made an official appearance at the Samsung event to showcase the latest developments in virtual reality in today's largest social network, Facebook.
For those who thought that Facebook's attack on virtual reality had ended there, it's better to change your mind. Facebook announced during its annual developer summit, F8, the Surround 360, a device for producing videos in 360º and, of course, compatible with virtual reality. Surround 360 has inside 17 lenses 3D with the ability to capture videos and transmit them to virtual reality glasses, such as the Oculus Rift.
The cameras allow for high quality recording. Each of the 17 cameras installed on the device can take photos in 4K, 6K and even 8K. As if that were not enough, there is also a camera at the top and two sensors at the bottom that make sure everything around has been photographed.
The aluminum housing of the Surround 360 is capable of withstanding even in extreme conditions, making it ideal for “hostile” environments.
An interesting detail is that, according to Facebook, the post-production work, practically nil. Each camera has a system based on geolocation, so the application will have less work to correctly join all the recorded parts.
Is this Facebook's entry into the camera market?
According to Mark Zuckerberg, this is not the intention, Facebook intends to provide Surround 360, in character open source, so that developers can create new features. The hardware design and programming code involved in understanding and merging the images will be made available for free on Github. The process will be completed in the second half of 2016.
