A New 360 Camera Design for Multi Format VR Experiences

Abstract

We present a new 360 camera design for creating 360 videos for immersive VR experiences. We place eight fish-eye lenses on a circle. Four interlaced fish-eye lenses are slightly re-oriented up in order to cover the scene above. To the best of our knowledge, our camera has the smallest diameter of any existing stereo multi-lens rig on the market. Our camera can be used to create 2D, 3D and 6DoF multi-format 360 videos. Due to its compact design, the minimum safe distance of our new camera is very short (approximately 30cm). This allows users to create special intimate immersive experiences. We also propose to characterize the camera design using the fractal ratio of the distance of adjacent view points and interpupillary distance. While most early camera designs have fractal ratio $> 1$ or $=1$, our camera has the fractal ratio $(< 1)$. Moreover, with adjustable rendering interpupillary distance, our camera can be used to flexibly control the interpupillary distance for creating 3D 360 videos. Our camera design has high fault tolerance and it can continue operating properly even in the event of the failure of some individual lenses.