At today’s F8 conference, plenty has happened, including the announcement of introducing chatbots for Facebook Messenger. Well, that is not all there is to it, as one of the most popular social networks in the world has also made an announcement concerning Facebook’s very own 360 degree 3D camera that is capable of capturing up to 2 hours of 360 degree video, now how about that?
Despite this, Facebook is adamant that they are not going to indulge in the camera business, and hence, this particular effort will remain open source. The camera is not going to come cheap for sure – it will cost a whopping $25,000 to construct at the very least, where it will boast of 17 different capture devices that are synchronized, with the ability to record up to a couple of hours of 360-degree video at up to 60 frames per second – and also as much as 8k for each eye.
In addition, Facebook will also roll out software that stitches the footage together in a seamless manner. Regardless of whether it is hardware or software (stitching code included), these will all be open source projects. Developers can access the system on GitHub from this summer onward, and to have the camera as open source will hopefully “accelerate the growth of the 3D-360 ecosystem—developers can leverage the designs and code, and content creators can use the camera in their productions.
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