Creating content for the virtual reality is not all that easy. It often required dedicated hardware, which is not easy to come by. Those units which do exist are pretty expensive. Facebook and Red Digital Camera are teaming up to make a positive impact in this regard. Developing a new VR camera will not be an easy feat.

The Professional VR Camera is Coming

This new partnership between Facebook and Red Digital Cinema was announced earlier this week. 24 hours later, we finally figured out what the current plan of action is. Facebook and Red will create a professional-grade VR cinema camera.A remarkable venture, although one which poses plenty of challenges.

It is evident Facebook has high expectations for the VR industry. Bringing more cinematic content to VR headset owners is an option worth exploring. The objective is to create footage with six degrees of freedom, as well as options to further explore the movie scenes. How this will be achieved exactly, remains unclear.

According to both companies, this VR camera works as follows:

“Facebook’s industry-leading depth estimation technology captures full 3D information about all objects in scenes to deliver a complete 3D reconstruction. Add in 6DOF capture — the ability to simultaneously film multiple angles from within a given volume — and you can generate infinite perspectives from any direction within a field of view so your audience can explore the scene freely.”

So far, the concept of a VR camera is held back by technical constraints. Capturing 3D 360-degree video content has been very challenging. Red’s camera sensors can make this process a lot easier. Even so, this venture is a very steep hill to climb and one that may not be overcome successfully in the end.

Header image courtesy of Shutterstock

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