San Francisco – The F8 started today and Mark Zuckerberg opened with an exciting keynote of what was coming in the next 48 hours. Facebook’s developing staff will take turns to present what is new; easy marketing, a chat bot, apps, and an open source VR camera, among many other things.

Facebook wants in the VR industry and they started by acquiring Oculus VR. After that in September 2015, they started releasing 360 videos on the social media’s news feed. The company worked with a lot of famous people to create 360 content including Ray LaMontagne, the MTV Movie Awards and movie studios like Walt Disney Pictures.

Facebook revealed a 369-degree camera hardware and software system today at its F8 conference. Credit: Fast Company
Facebook revealed a 369-degree camera hardware and software system today at its F8 conference. Credit: Fast Company

Accordingly, the company announced a VR camera at the F8 conference on April 12, 2016. The device is called “Surround 360” and even though is not the first of its kind, it is open source.

To be clear, Facebook is not going to start selling a recording device. The blueprint necessary to build the camera will be posted online on GitHub on summer and the company encourages people to analyze the design and improve it.

Surround 360 looks like Seattle’s Space Needle. On the sides, it has 14 cameras facing every direction, 2 more cameras on the bottom and a fish eye on the top to complete the set. They all record 8k videos without heating problems and Surround 360 can work for more than 2 hours without breaking a sweat.

Additionally, the company will upload an API that stitches the images captured by the 17 cameras to create the VR effect. The camera is estimated to cost $30.000, so it is not a simple project. In spite of this, specialists predict that both big companies and enthusiast will modify and use them.

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Mr. Zuckerberg has boasted Facebook counts with more than a billion users and in the F8, a couple members of the company’s staff talked about marketing, specifically, how to reach these ever growing community. To be honest, there are no details on how they plan to do it yet, but a couple marketing specialists explained how they used free basis to reach a lot of consumers. In this regard, it is important to note that Facebook updated its policies which and specialists have pointed out the modification is designed to allow more ads.

To be honest, there are no details on how they plan to do it yet, but a couple marketing specialists explained how they used free basis to reach a lot of consumers. In this regard, it is important to note that Facebook updated its policies which and specialists have pointed out the modification is designed to allow more ads.

Much more was announced and if you cannot go, you could watch the rest of the F8 on the web page starting tomorrow at 10 AM.

Source: F8