Virtual Reality Camera

A virtual reality camera (also called a VR camera) is a camera, or an array of cameras, that captures imagery covering a wide field of view, up to a full sphere, for playback in virtual reality headsets and other immersive viewers. The defining task is recording a scene in enough directions, and often from two slightly offset viewpoints, that a person wearing a head-mounted display can look around the footage and perceive it with depth. The output is normally delivered as 360 Video or as 180-degree video, sometimes with stereoscopic 3D, and in more advanced systems as volumetric or light-field data that allows limited movement within the recorded space.

VR cameras range from inexpensive consumer devices with two back-to-back fisheye lenses, such as the Ricoh Theta and Samsung Gear 360, to professional rigs costing tens of thousands of dollars that combine many synchronized cameras, such as the Nokia OZO, the Facebook Surround 360, and rigs built for Google Jump. Interest in the category rose sharply around 2015 and 2016 alongside the first consumer VR headsets, then contracted as several high-profile systems and platforms were discontinued. By the mid-2010s the term was largely associated with live-action immersive video and film rather than the computer-generated environments produced by game engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine.

Capture types

VR cameras are usually grouped by how much of the scene they record and whether they reproduce stereoscopic depth.

Monoscopic 360 video records a full surrounding sphere from a single viewpoint, producing one image that is mapped onto the inside of a sphere for the viewer. A monoscopic 360 image is essentially one image captured in every direction; it lets the viewer look around but presents the same picture to both eyes, so nearby objects look flat in a headset. Most low-cost consumer 360 cameras capture monoscopic video.

Stereoscopic 360 video records the surrounding scene from two horizontally offset perspectives, one for each eye, so the viewer sees the binocular disparity that the human visual system uses to judge distance. This makes nearby objects appear to have depth and is generally described as more immersive than monoscopic 360, at the cost of more complex capture and processing. A common way to store omnidirectional stereo is to capture or synthesize a separate panorama for each eye.

Stereoscopic 180 video (VR180) covers only the front 180 degrees rather than a full sphere, in stereoscopic 3D. Limiting the field of view lets a device capture depth from two front-facing lenses without the multi-camera stitching that full-sphere stereo requires, which simplifies both the hardware and the production workflow.

Volumetric and light-field capture goes beyond a fixed viewpoint by recording how light enters a volume of space, so the viewer can move their head within a limited region and see correct parallax and occlusion rather than a panorama pinned to one position. Light-field capture combines the visual quality of photographed scenes with the freedom of movement of synthetic content, allowing six degrees of freedom inside the camera's recorded volume.

How 360 video is captured and stitched

A 360 camera records the scene in every direction using several overlapping wide-angle or fisheye lenses, or a rig of separate cameras; the individual feeds are then combined into a single seamless image in a process called stitching. Consumer devices typically use two fisheye lenses, each covering more than 180 degrees, mounted back to back so the two images overlap at the edges and can be joined. Professional rigs use many cameras arranged in a ring or sphere to raise resolution and to capture the two eye views needed for stereoscopic output.

For stereoscopic 360, Google's Jump system used a technique called omnidirectional stereo (ODS). ODS produces a single projection that is both panoramic and stereoscopic so the viewer can look in any direction, and it can be stored in the same format as ordinary video, which suits post-production, streaming, and mobile playback. Because a fixed ring of cameras only samples certain viewpoints, the regions between cameras are filled in by view interpolation: the system computes how the image from one camera transforms into the next using optical flow, then generates the in-between viewpoints needed for a smooth stereo panorama. Facebook's Surround 360 used a similar optical-flow approach to compute left-eye and right-eye stereo disparity automatically instead of stitching by hand.

Professional cameras and rigs

A wave of high-end VR cameras appeared between 2015 and 2018, most of them aimed at filmmakers and most of them since discontinued.

The Nokia OZO was announced in July 2015 and released on 30 November 2015. It was an all-in-one professional camera with eight lenses and eight microphones in an aluminium-alloy body; each lens had a 195-degree field of view and shot at 30 frames per second, and the camera recorded stereoscopic 360-degree video with spatial audio. It launched at a price reported around $45,000 to $60,000 and was later discounted. On 10 October 2017 Nokia announced the end of OZO production, citing a slower-than-expected VR market, while continuing customer support.

The GoPro Odyssey was a 16-camera rig built for Google Jump, announced in September 2015. It used 16 synchronized GoPro HERO4 Black cameras synced to the pixel level and captured stereoscopic 360 video that the Jump Assembler rendered at up to 8K. It was sold to industry professionals for $15,000 through a limited GoPro and Google program. Google later partnered with Yi Technology on the Yi Halo, a 17-lens Jump rig priced at about $17,000. GoPro also sold a consumer spherical camera, the GoPro Fusion.

The Surround 360 was Facebook's open-source VR camera, announced in 2016. The reference design used 17 cameras: 14 wide-angle cameras around a horizontal ring, one fisheye camera on top, and two on the bottom, built from off-the-shelf parts for roughly $30,000. Facebook did not sell the camera but published the hardware designs and the Ubuntu Linux stitching software on GitHub so others could build it.

Insta360, a Shenzhen company founded in 2015, built a line of professional 360 cameras alongside its consumer models. The Insta360 Pro 2 is a six-lens 360 camera that shoots 8K video and photos in both 3D and monoscopic formats, includes FlowState image stabilization, and supports up to 8K VR live streaming. The larger Insta360 Titan uses eight lenses with eight Micro Four Thirds sensors and records up to 11K 360 video and 10K 3D video.

Kandao produced the Obsidian R and Obsidian S, professional stereoscopic 3D 360 cameras. The Obsidian uses six fisheye lenses and records 3D 360 video at 8K30 or 4K60, and it can generate a depth map of the scene as well as the stereo image.

Selected professional VR cameras and rigs

Camera/rig	Maker	Lenses/cameras	Capture	Note
Nokia OZO	Nokia	8 lenses, 8 mics	Stereoscopic 360 + spatial audio	Released 2015, discontinued 2017
GoPro Odyssey	GoPro / Google	16 (HERO4 Black)	Stereoscopic 360 (Jump) up to 8K	$15,000, built for Google Jump
Yi Halo	Yi / Google	17	Stereoscopic 360 (Jump)	About $17,000
Surround 360	Facebook	17	Stereoscopic 3D 360	Open-source hardware and software
Insta360 Pro 2	Insta360	6	8K 3D and monoscopic 360	FlowState stabilization, 8K live streaming
Insta360 Titan	Insta360	8 (MFT sensors)	Up to 11K 360, 10K 3D	Professional rig
Kandao Obsidian R/S	Kandao	6 fisheye	8K30 stereoscopic 360 + depth map	Generates depth information
Lytro Immerge	Lytro	Up to 95 cameras	Light field, six degrees of freedom	Company shut down 2018

Consumer cameras

Lower-cost devices brought 360 capture to non-professionals. The Samsung Gear 360, unveiled in early 2016 and released later that year at about $350, used two fisheye lenses to record 360 video at 3840 by 1920 pixels; a 2017 model recorded up to 4096 by 2048 and could live-stream to YouTube, Facebook, and Samsung VR. The Ricoh Theta series and the consumer Insta360 ONE used the same back-to-back dual-fisheye design. Most of these consumer cameras captured monoscopic 360, which is easier to produce than stereoscopic 360 but looks flat when viewed in a headset.

The Vuze camera was a consumer-priced rig aimed specifically at stereoscopic capture, and devices such as the Nikon KeyMission 360 targeted action and outdoor 360 shooting.

In 2017 Google introduced VR180, a format for stereoscopic 180-degree point-and-shoot cameras, with partners including Lenovo and Yi Technology. The Lenovo Mirage Camera shipped in 2018 at $299 with two 13-megapixel fisheye lenses spaced roughly eye-distance apart, and the Yi Horizon VR180 captured 5.7K stereoscopic video.

Volumetric and light-field cameras

Light-field and volumetric cameras attempt to capture not just the color of light arriving at a point but also its direction, so a viewer can move within a small volume and see correct parallax. The Lytro Immerge was described by Lytro as the first professional light-field solution for cinematic VR; the original version used a large array of cameras (reports cited 95) to record live-action footage with six degrees of freedom, meaning a viewer could lean and shift within the recorded volume rather than only rotate their head. Lytro pivoted away from consumer products and then wound down in 2018, announcing in March of that year that it would cease production and professional services; reports linked the shutdown to an acquisition of assets and staff by Google. Related capture approaches use Photogrammetry and depth sensing to reconstruct volumetric models of people and scenes.

Use in VR film and applications

The main creative use of VR cameras has been live-action immersive film and documentary, distinct from the synthetic worlds rendered by real-time 3D engines. Cinematic VR studios such as Felix and Paul Studios produced 360 and stereoscopic 3D documentaries, several of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival's New Frontier exhibition and won Daytime Emmy Awards. Footage shot on professional rigs such as the Nokia OZO was used in professional filmmaking, including early work by Disney. Beyond entertainment, 360 capture is used for virtual tours, training, journalism, and real-estate walkthroughs, often delivered as 360 photos and video viewable both in headsets and in ordinary web browsers. Many of these productions are watched on standalone headsets and through dedicated VR video players rather than only on high-end PC systems.

Decline of dedicated VR cameras

The professional VR camera market that grew with the first consumer headsets contracted within a few years. Nokia ended OZO production in 2017, Lytro wound down in 2018, and Google shut down its Jump VR video service on 28 June 2019, removing the Assembler that had stitched footage from rigs like the GoPro Odyssey and Yi Halo. Google's VR180 format also stalled in 2019 as its camera partners pulled back: Lenovo stopped selling the Mirage in the United States and Yi did not bring its Horizon camera to market. Companies that remained in the space, such as Insta360, shifted their main focus toward consumer 360 and action cameras while keeping a smaller professional 360 line.