Facebook introduced its Surround 360 3-D 360-degree camera system at its F8 global developers conference in April, and this week, the social network open-sourced its specifications.
When Surround 360 debuted at F8, Facebook said it had no plans to brand or sell the system, adding that it would post the specifications to GitHub. That day has come.
Research scientist Forrest Briggs made the announcement in a blog post:
Today we officially open-sourced the specs for Surround 360, our high-quality 3-D-360 hardware and software video capture system. The open-source project includes the hardware camera design and software stitching code that makes end-to-end 3-D-360 video capture possible in one system?from shooting to video processing. We believe making the camera design and stitching code freely available on GitHub will accelerate the growth of the 3-D-360 ecosystem?developers will be able to leverage the code, and content creators can use the camera in their productions. Anyone will be able to contribute to, build on top of, improve or distribute the camera based on these specs.
Surround 360 seamlessly combines the video from 17 cameras?14 wide-angle cameras bolted to a horizontal ring, with one fish-eye camera on top and two more on the bottom?helping slash production effort and time.
Readers: What are your thoughts on the open-sourcing of Surround 360"

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