Facebook now has a 360 degree camera too

Facebook's F8 developer conference is going on right now, and that means we're seeing plenty of new features and products being announced.


The latest sees the company rolling out their own 360 degree camera - which isn't a massive surprise from the owners of Oculus Rift. The product is called Surround 360 and features a total of 17 cameras - 14 arrayed in a circle around the body, a fish eye camera on top and two fish eye lenses on the bottom. It's said to offer total coverage, so you won't get that bizarre void where the tripod or operator is and costs around $30,000.


The most important element of the new camera is that it is capable of stiching together the footage in real time, with no complicated software needed. That's going to be a big advantage when this technology really takes off, provided you have the money to get involved in the first place. While Facebook has the design they've decided to make it totally open source, which means they'll be giving all the specs away for free on Github for talented folks to do with as they please, potentially creating new versions of the camera and helping to spread 360 degree video.


Surround 360 shoots up to 8K video and is highly durable and portable and early reports of the footage suggests its one of the better options out there - and it doesn't hurt that it creates video which will export directly to Facebook's feed. The design will be made available in summer 2016.