Pilot Era 8K 360-degree VR Camera

COULD THIS BE THE 360-DEGREE CAMERA YOU’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR?

PILOT ERA IS a VR camera which can record 360-degree photos or videos in up to 8K, or livestream in 4K without needing to be connected to a computer. The hardware sports 512GB of storage, gyroscope stabilisation, a powerful 7,200mAh battery, wireless connectivity, and it’s even compatible with Google’s Street View.

In order to perform its recording feats, Pilot Era comes with four fish-eye cameras, one on each side of its large rectangular body.

This device is powered by Android-based software, with the review model running the latest version at the time: 4.8.0.

The device is controlled via a small touchscreen. If you know how to use a mobile phone, you’ll have no problem getting to grips with this camera. But you’ll need sharp eyes or a magnifying glass to read some of the text labels in Camera mode (thankfully you can guess their functions by their icons, anyway), and precise finger control to move sliders.

When you start up the device, you’re graced with four large icons: you can access the Camera to take new shots, tap on the Gallery to see previously shot images, whereas Live lets you stream to social media (as long as you’re connected to a network, of course, either via Wi-Fi, 4G or Ethernet), and Settings is where all your preferences are stored.

Unstitched video resolution ranges from 4K at 30 fps to 8K at 24 fps, whereas stitched video resolution differs, and ranges from 2K at 30 fps to 8K at 7 fps.

The idea of unstitched video is that the device can use better but slower algorithms to connect the videos together, later on.

Live enables you to broadcast live, without needing to connect the camera to a computer. You can connect directly to several social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Weibo, Pi Live, or a self-built RTMP server.

All video options have a PilotSteady feature which, when turned on, helps stabilise your shot and minimise motion when moving the camera around.

Finally, the Google Street View setting allows you to choose the frame-rate from 1 fps to 7 fps, and have footage you can upload to Google to strengthen its Street View feature… as long as you don’t mind working for one of the richest companies in the world for nothing.

The level of quality achieved will obviously depend on the resolution you’ve chosen in the camera’s settings, but overall, aside from the inevitable fish-eyed distortion effect you’ll see – especially if you handled the camera, meaning you’ll end up with freakishly long and thin-looking arms – the results are excellent.

Because of this, it’s best to work with a tripod. The promo video shows people walking around with cameras sticking out of their backpacks on a special rod. However, that rod isn’t included with the hardware, so we used a regular stationary tripod instead in some of our tests.