I think 360 video is great for personal use. Earlier this year I bought an $350 Ricoh Theta S and shot some 360 video. Here is an example of my friend [1] colli

I think 360 video is great for personal use. Earlier this year I bought an $350 Ricoh Theta S and shot some 360 video. Here is an example of my friend [1] colliding into me while skiing (might want to turn the sound down though, sorry). With just a 180 camera you wouldn't be able to see what happened and why. 3D cameras are great, but 360 takes you a long way toward immersion when used in a headset. Stereoscopy works well only when the objects you care about are between 6 and 20 feet from the camera. Outside of that stereoscopy doesn't give anymore depth cues simply because of how close together our eyes are. Here is a photo wigglegram [2] I took with a $20 Nimslo 3D; it's widest lenses are as far apart as your eyes. Note how flat the background starts to look after the second row of people? That is because they are too far. As a weird camera and VR enthusiast, I have found it non intuitive to predict what will work or not. I hope this facebook rig and software that uses "optical flow to compute left-right eye stereo disparity" will be immersive and practical. 360 in 3D facebook and google promise sounds fantastic. In a few years, I hope we will have something for the non-professional content producer. [1] https://www.facebook.com/fooladder/videos/vb.8800136/10106027312584149 https://www.facebook.com/fooladder/videos/vb.8800136/1010602... [2] http://fooladder.com/post/115435676962/at-the-concert http://fooladder.com/post/115435676962/at-the-concert