Thought your new GoPro, Contour or Sony Action cam was state-of-the-art? Well, it may well be made to look old-school in comparison to the new kid on the block.
Meet the 360fly action camera, a camera that films not only whatever it’s pointed at, but everything else around it as well.
Boasting “the world’s widest field of view” the device can capture everything around it on a 360 degree horizontal axis and a 240 degree vertical axis (presumably because it’s got to be mounted on something).
Once you’ve filmed your shot, you can upload it to your smart phone and using the touchscreen technology, swipe left and right, up and down or pinch and zoom to watch whatever you like. Pretty clever eh?
The advantages for action sports filming are immediately obvious. No more missing the shot of your mate cos you were pointing the camera the wrong way and no need to worry about which friend to film in a group.
In fact with one of these there’ll be no need to stop riding yourself to film either – if you don’t need to concentrate on where the camera is pointing, you may as well be shredding with the group right?
As you might expect, the company behind it is not shy of bigging up its properties. They claim that it’s not in fact a camera at all, but rather “a device designed to capture what happened as if you were there” that will usher in “a new era of video.”
But while it’s easy to be cynical about marketing spiel, we have to say that if it performs as promised this could be truly revolutionary. It’s already been endorsed by freeskiing legend Simon Dumont, which is a good sign.
The 360fly, which is based on technology developed in the robotics lab of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is small, compact and looks like mounts to anything a standard action cam would – helmets, surf boards, skate decks etc.
It will apparently be launched later this spring, but you can pre-order one from the company’s website now. They’re not cheap, at $500 (£340) a pop, but hey, it’s the future right?
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