Facebook Unveils Its New Surround 360 Cameras with 6 DoF

Image credit: VR Focus

In a big push towards creating more immersive rich content, Facebook recently announced the second generation Surround 360 Cameras. The new Surround 360 Cameras is Facebook’s latest serious attempt in creating better content for games and movies and other best-looking videos, giving its users enhanced interactivity.

Facebook has released two models of the Surround 360 Cameras namely the x24 and the x6. As the name suggests, the x24 camera hosts a 24-camera array while the x6 camera hosts a 6-camera array. The spherical camera setup for the x24 model measures 10 inches in diameter while for the x6 models it is half at 5 inches diameter.

Surround 360 Cameras Offer 6 DoF

Image credit: Engadget

One of the greatest technological enhancements the Surround 360 Cameras offer is the six degrees of freedom (6 DoF). This means that your body can move is six directions of front, back, left, right, up and down in VR, adding up to more realism and immersion in your experience.

Earlier, with 360 videos, the limitation was that when the user used to move left or right, he/she was still confined to the area around them wherever the camera was placed. But with the new Surround 360 Cameras having the ability to capture 8K scenes with 6 DoF, you can get a very detailed per-pixel depth of objects and every part of the scene thereby allowing you to move your head in a position where the camera could not capture originally.

Engineering director at Facebook who leads Surround 360 development, Brian Cabrel says “We capture and then we can estimate depth. We actually compute for every pixel where it is in the scene. Once the pixel has a location, viewers can view it from any perspective as it if were part of a real-life scene. After the depth estimation process, which Facebook handles with its own custom software in the cloud, the video then can be edited with any number of standard post-processing toolsets from Adobe, Foundry, and others.”

One of the greatest advantages this 6 DoF technology offers is that it gives the ability to add 3D effects in live-actions, thereby creating much more engaging and intuitive videos. This means that within the live-action videos you can add CGI imagery like adding flowers or butterflies to the surrounding scenes or even changing the background brightness between light and dark by just playing with the light and depth data. Check the below GIF.

GIF credit: CNET

Working across Multiple Platforms

Also one of the good things is that content captured can be reformatted for different platforms. This means that videos captured for Vive can be translated to the Rift or Gear VR format or can even be viewed on your smartphone screen through the Facebook app. However, note that as you move towards less technologically equipped devices, things like 6 DoF and positional tracking might not work. But as the video was originally captured in 8k, the fidelity of the compressed video will still remain high resulting in high-quality output.

Facebook’s new Surround 360 Cameras with 6 DoF will certainly give VR Porn content creator and game developers a new boost in delivering more intimate and engaging experiences. This is because viewers will be able to have a more advanced level of depth interaction with the characters while watching those hot chics in different angles, touching their assets and the imagination goes endless.

However, Facebook denied to comment right now regarding the pricing of the device. The reason being that Facebook does not intend to sell these cameras directly to the customers, however it will be licensing this design and technology to other hardware manufacturers and other commercial partners. It is much likely that we could see one such camera product in action by the year end. Also, there is no word whether these camera will be sold under the Facebook brand or not.