Nokia’s OZO Camera — A New Reality?

Nokia’s entering the Virtual Reality arena with a camera that can capture 360-degree panoramas

The emergent question on a lot of peoples’ mind regarding Nokia’s future may finally have been answered at a recent event in Los Angeles.

The Finnish behemoth revealed that it is working on a Virtual Reality camera that can capture 360-degree panoramas.

After the acquisition of the Devices & Services division of the company by Microsoft in 2013, a lot of us questioned how long Nokia would last, and what would save it. Well, the folks at Nokia have obviously been using their smarts.

Instead of creating a new things from scratch, Nokia’s been looking into it’s cupboard of patents and technologies, and has moved to creating novel products from stuff it’s already innovated.

So, they’ve repurposed camera technologies that had originally developed (but didn’t use) for their Lumia range of smartphones (that they subsequently sold to Microsoft).

Some interesting tech and innovation has been repurposed for use in Nokia’s new OZO camera. Nokia collaborated with a VR production company Jaunt Studios and has now moulded and developed the technology specifically for use in the movie industry.

As reported by BBC, the spherical OZO camera is fitted with eight lenses and eight microphones, that enables it to record 360-degrees of both stereoscopic video and sound.

You can imagine how amazing the panoramas this device would be able to produce, especially since there’s high-quality audio going along!

Virtual Reality headsets can be used to view the content created by the innovative device — you could see the entire panorama just by turning your head as you normally would and yet, also experience the sound change while doing the same.

Imagine watching a VR scene of you standing by a river and looking up to see a flock of birds fly past, chattering excitedly. You’ll be able to enjoy that moment in time in all it’s splendour thanks to Nokia’s brilliant technology.

Ramzi Haidamus, President of Nokia Technologies, stated, “We’re thrilled to introduce OZO to the content creation world, and to define a completely new category of virtual reality capture and playback solutions. OZO aims to advance the next wave of innovation in VR by putting powerful tools in the hands of professionals who will create amazing experiences for people around the world”.

He excitingly added that, “We expect that virtual reality experiences will soon radically enhance the way people communicate and connect to stories, entertainment, world events and each other. With OZO, we plan to be at the heart of this new world”.

The device could prove to be a great asset for the filmmakers who can view the live footage of what the camera is shooting by connecting a VR headset. After recording, the captured content can be replayed very rapidly, which gives the device an edge over its rivals.

Chris Green, a VR expert, who is a consultant at Davies Murphy Group, has said, “Nokia has a great deal of experience developing not only camera technology, but also the portability of camera technology. The company was putting in high-end cameras on very small mobile phones and producing exceptional image results years before other manufacturers.”

Ranging from the ability to work with a range of third-party apps to the integration into the existing production channels, OZO promises to become one of the foremost solutions for all the digital media issues of the users.

The device makes use of the standard tripod mount which outputs the video in conventional formats, making it easier to be viewed in a VR headset as well as allows the videos to be uploaded to YouTube.

The latest announcement by Nokia Technologies shows the increasing appeal which the virtual reality experience is offering to the tech firms. Numerous tech giants including Samsung, Google and Facebook have been working to launch their first-ever VR headset.

And we can’t wait much longer to see how the world really feels virtually!

Originally published at Chip-Monks.