Samsung’s Gear 360 camera looks like an eyeball and shoots 360-degree video

Samsung’s Gear 360 camera looks like an eyeball and shoots 360-degree video

Another similarity to cameras like the Ricoh Theta S is that the Gear 360’s image stitching algorithm falls apart a bit when subjects get too close to the camera, something that was visible during a brief demo last week in New York. If the subject you’re shooting is at least a few steps away from the camera, though, the stitching looks solid.

The rest of the picture looked quite good, too. The camera shoots 30-megapixel spherical photos and 3840 x 1920 video, and both looked clear when we viewed them on the S7 demo unit that we had a few minutes to play around with. One particular test video — footage shot by the Gear 360 from the top of a massive ski jump — even looked good inside of a GearVR. It’s not on par with footage shot by professional rigs used by companies like NextVR or Jaunt, but it’s a start.

The more the merrier, I say. Even if this isn’t pro quality, it could be used by startups for VR prototyping. The big question is whether everyday people will be compelled to buy such a camera. Maybe people would want this capability actually built into their phones?