Facebook and RED launch the Manifold, a 360-degree VR camera for the future

Professional video camera giants, RED and Facebook have been working together for a while now (more than a year now actually) and seem finally ready to show their 3D VR camera creation named Manifold. [caption id=“attachment_5277601” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”] The Manifold. Image: Facebook 360[/caption] Defined by Facebook in a blog post as the “world’s first end-to-end solution for 3D and 360 video capture”, content captured by the ball-shaped camera when viewed through 6DoF VR headsets (like the Oculus Quest), should look unreal. For geeks, the camera houses as many as 16 RED Helium 8K sensors, coupled with 180-degree lenses, which capture a complete, 60 FPS VR video in one scene. Still unsure about what all this hardware means? As broken down in a report by Engadget, the resulting 360-degree VR video is high-quality content that moves as you move. You might not be able to walk through a video while watching it just yet, but you won’t be limited to viewing the seen from a static position either.

The report also goes on to mention that the camera is also quite flexible. The control and storage units can be kept up to 328 feet away from the camera and third-party storage options provide an extra hour of recording time. As for editors, they are limited to using tools from Adobe and Foundry, though one can control the camera array from a regular web browser from any device. There’s also a developer kit to allow support for third-party processing tools. However, neither company is quite sure as to just when Manifold will be ready for commercial production. Needless to say that only a handful of companies will be able to get their hands on one even when it does eventually go on sale.