Facebook unveils Surround 360

Facebook unveiled its own 360-degree stereoscopic 3D video camera at the two-day F8 developer conference underway at Fort Mason in San Francisco, California.

The company calls this new device the Facebook Surround 360, and this summer, it will give away for free both the camera's hardware designs and the complex software that weaves the camera's myriad images into one complete three-dimensional landscape.

Built for $30,000 (roughly Rs. 20 lakhs), this black circular camera has a disk-shaped spaceship-like design that has 17 evenly spaced lenses. The camera records images from all 17 of those lenses and produces a 360-degree spherical video for viewing virtual reality headsets like the Samsung Gear (stereoscopic 3D) and on ordinary smartphones, tablets, and PCs (monoscopic).