Nokia announces the debut of its $60,000 OZO virtual reality camera

Nokia is back, and it’s back in a big way. After selling its mobile business to Microsoft two years ago, the Finland-based firm is reintroducing itself with great fanfare. On Friday, Nokia Technologies announced the debut of the OZO professional VR camera, a $60,000 piece of hardware capable of recording 360-degree audio and video in full stereoscopic 3D. The only problem, of course, is that the camera is meant to capture footage for virtual reality headsets, and those aren’t all that ubiquitous … yet.

The OZO is described as “a sleek, gray, cantaloupe-size sphere with eight lenses inside it,” which combine to record completely spherical footage. Eight microphones also record and recreate true surround sound. While Nokia has tested the OZO’s capabilities to capture VR video of astronauts in immersion pools at NASA’s Houston base, the camera is also set to capture aerial footage when mounted to a drone.

“OZO enables the creation of immersive virtual reality experiences that actually move us emotionally, and move us to act,” said Ramzi Haidamus, president of Nokia Technologies. “Through OZO we can feel more present in the lives of people we’ve never met, and widen the circle of empathy in ways we could never have imagined before. Technology that moves us this deeply is technology that moves us all forward.”

Nokia also plans on partnering with Deluxe to provide “high quality post-production services for OZO VR content, including editorial, stitching, and color.” John Wallace, CEO of Deluxe, expressed excitement over the new partnership, noting, “Our collaboration with OZO allows us to provide high quality post-production rendering to create the highest level of VR experiences. We are tremendously excited by the capture capabilities of the OZO for the professional broadcast community — the first time a dedicated camera has been developed for this sector.”

Obviously, the $60,000 price point makes the OZO more suitable for professionals (or those with large budgets), and as the first out-of-box solution to VR filming, this may be a fair charge. Still, in order to make the OZO more accessible to the general public, Nokia has indicated that it has plans for cheaper versions in the near future. So if you’re looking to truly film in VR (rather than trying to stitch together a makeshift multi-camera system), you can now thank Nokia for the OZO.

Source: The verge