360fly: panorama video camera opens world of possibilities

It’s small, waterproof, records video in 360 degrees and is easy to use. The possibilities for 360fly are endless.

A still from a 360fly video as seen using a regular video player.

A little camera hardly bigger than a golf ball lets you create your own 360-degree virtual reality movie extravaganzas.

I’ve been spending time with the 360fly camera and it’s amazing what this little gadget, available locally from November 16, can do.

A half-hour after unboxing it and charging it, I took video with it at my desk at The Australian. When I got home and donned the 360fly virtual reality headset, there was the office environment re-created in 360-degree splendour in my lounge room. I could turn around and see other parts of the office as if I were at my desk.

Needless to say, I took it the headset off quickly — I didn’t want to spoil the ambience of my quiet night at home and, besides, 360fly camera can be put to much better uses.

That happened the next day when I used 360fly to shoot video while on the Ferris wheel at Sydney’s Luna Park, with its spectacular view of the harbour.

You wirelessly transfer the vision shot with the little camera to a smartphone and then insert the phone into the back of a 360fly headset. It works with Apple and Android handsets.

Recording video in 360 degrees opens a world of possibilities, especially as this small device is waterproof, and can attach to standard GoPro mounts. I attached it to a selfie stick and went walking around the street.

So, first up, wherever you use a GoPro, you should be able to take video in 360 degrees. The resolution isn’t full 1080p or 4K as with newer GoPros, but 720p HD, reasonable considering the camera takes a full panorama.

The scenarios are limitless: bushwalks, bridge climbs, theme parks, rollercoaster rides, horse rides and any form of car, motorcycle or bike trips.

If you don’t have a VR headset, the good news is that there are other ways of watching 360-­degree video, and you can easily share it with friends.

For a start, you can send them a link where they can watch your 360-degree epic as a video online. Scrub left or right on the video to see other parts of the 360-degree panorama. Or rotate your smartphone around to see other aspects of the 360-degree scene.

The 360fly is easy to operate. It has one button. Press to turn on and its LED turns blue. Press again, the LED turns red and it’s recording. It can record for about two hours, we are told.

Control recording via an iOS or Android device; the 360fly app is available for both. The camera and phone pair with Bluetooth, but the camera is its own Wi-Fi hot spot, and a phone connects to that.

The app is intuitive and easy to use. Download clips to the phone and delete clips on the camera using your phone. You also can create stills of video stored on the phone as regular 16:9 images, circular fisheye 360-degree views, or panoramas.

A still from a 360fly video as seen using a regular video player.

With “clip capture”, you can edit separate sections of a video into one clip by using gestures within the app. The “watch me” option lets you create a “normal” video by selecting different parts of the vision and as you go. “Watch me” could prove incredibly useful.

If you put the 360fly in the centre of a conference table and film the proceedings, afterwards you could create a video that pans to each person as they speak, as if a camera operator had been present.

Videos are shareable on the 360fly site, and on Facebook and Twitter. I imagine that you’ll be able to post them on video platforms and embed scrollable 360 degree videos in social media posts very soon. Facebook already has announced its upcoming availability.

You can see from the photo above that 360 degree video is cleverly encoded as a circle. It’s like your experience captured on a golf ball and it won’t be that hard to stream. So in the future we might be able to even Periscope it. That opens the opportunity for someone to don a VR headset at home and virtually experience being somewhere else on the planet, in real time.

Put the 360fly in the middle of the kitchen table and you could virtually invite an overseas guest to dinner with a group of your friends.

The camera’s view is a full 360 degrees horizontally and above, but it doesn’t show vision beneath you. That area is blackened out. And while it offers a 360-degree view, it’s not 3-D and therefore not so immersive. Sometime in the future we’re likely to see even higher resolution 360 degree cameras with that element of 3-D added.

But it’s an incredibly clever device that eliminates having to use multiple cameras for a full 360 degree view.

In concept the software is excellent and simplifies the workflow involved in capturing and editing video. I’m told it will be more feature rich in time. The 360fly costs $649.95; the VR headset is $69.95. Apart from the apps there’s free editing software for Windows and Apple’s OSX operating systems.

The camera and headset will be sold online through http://360fly.com and specialist stores.