In the spring/summer of 2015 we set out to design and construct the world’s highest quality virtual reality camera. The result of that effort was EYE™. Lessons we learned from that project are now reflected in our Mini EYE™ range of professional 360 cameras, various custom cameras we design for a range of professional clients, and one-off, experimental cameras such as BB360, designed for AMD.

We wanted to solve the challenge of capturing live action 3D VR, with 3D stereo in all 3 axes, while offering partial 6DOF (six degrees of freedom) for the viewer. It’s a theoretical concept as the software and hardware to render such video does not exist yet. In short we believe such a camera and system represents the future of live action VR, and will be the preferred consumption approach. Full 6DOF is good in theory, but does not account for how people will predominantly consume live action VR, which is generally sitting. So full 6DOF is not needed, and partial 6DOF allows the viewer to tilt their head, lean forward and back, etc, which we think is a good compromise. It also has the benefit of obviating the need for any control method/input for maneuvering within the 3D space.

We built the prototype seen here and have a blog post with more details. The camera is capable of stitching 2 x 14k left and right videos, and is designed to use a photogrammetry/point cloud/CGI based approach to stitching, to offer the 6DOF capabilities described above, but can also be used for regular stitching and optical flow stitching, in both mono and stereo (3D) configurations.

This original EYE™ design seen here is deprecated, but newer versions have been developed for clients including a custom 32 camera version for AMD.

If you are looking for a professional 360 camera, that is available now, and considered the best in the industry, please take a look at our popular Mini EYE cameras.

The page below is maintained for archival reasons.

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