SAMSUNG GEAR 360

Glitchy gambit

BIG BLUE have hardly put a foot wrong since unveiling the stellar Galaxy S7 and the company isn’t slowing its quality momentum. the marketing idea is simple: people love the Gear VR, give them something to make VR content with. Enter the 360° camera.

Gear 360 is one of the best widely available 360° cameras on the market. Water resistance is a treat and the included tripod is one of the most useful standard accessories boxed with a piece of consumer technology.

On the camera side each 15 MP CMOS sensor gets light through an f2,0, 180˚ fisheye lens. This translates to 360˚ visuals of around 30 MP (actually, Samsung quote twenty-five and some change), and therein lies the rub. The stitching just isn’t great. I ran it at different resolutions, different frame rates and still couldn’t come to a suitable solution.

In the screen capture you’ll see that the feeding trough (yes, it’s a repurposed gutter) doesn’t line up where the two cameras meet, and I’m duplicated in the background. Even my poor hen is initially mutilated before the processor realised that the image data it was seeing across the seam was from the same beast.

Do these stitching issues detract from the convenience of the device? No. The pairing process with the Galaxy S7 Edge was simple and the camera operation is intuitive. Overall quality was also good and, like with any digital image sensor, the camera was overpowered by noise is super low light conditions.

One major problem I did have, however, was a failure in viewing on-device 360˚ videos on the Gear VR. Samsung promises that you’ll be able to watch the Gear 360 content in VR, but I am yet to find the mode/setting that enables a fully immersive experience. I assume that the problem when you connect the phone to the headset is that it defaults to the Oculus user interface. Viewing locally stored media then happens in the cinematic mode and displays in widescreen on a screen in the environment of your choice. Samsung should be applauded for its achievement in bringing this next-generation technology to the mass consumer market. The company is capitalising on VR popularity and currently leading the charge to fully immersive entertainment.

There are more expensive, professional grade 360˚ cameras and camera rigs, but the Gear 360 is the best consumer solution for most people. Just watch out for the bugs. PM

TEST NOTES:

Connecting to the Gear 360 remotely on a Samsung phone will save a lot of editing time because you won’t need to cut out the awkward moments when you place the device or hit the stop button. Also position the camera lens level with your subject and keep the main action directly in front of one of the lenses; quality degrades on the edges of the frame because of the fisheye lens distortion.