The Factory, Facebook's internal creative team, picked the Grand Central Terminal to film a proof of concept for its new 360-degree video camera. They just released the end result of their project, a 360-degree video of the Grand Central Terminal.
Gizmodo reports that the CEO and founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, posted the video overnight on the social media network, calling it "a preview of what a full-length virtual reality movie will feel like." Anyone can watch the video without the need of a VR headset. However, because one can wave the handset around, it does work better on a phone than a PC.
According to The Verge, the New York City's Grand Central Terminal is among the more challenging places to shoot because it is a transit center. Over the course of a few days, Facebook only had three 90-minute windows to shoot back in March.
The short film created by The Factory is called "Here and Now." The footage treats Grand Central as a character. Every day, the place is home to thousands of discrete human interactions that one can experience up close and personal with the power of 360-degree video.
The short video can be watched in a web broswer or on smartphone, but it was designed for the Oculus Gear VR headset. Throughout the five-week shooting and editing process The Factory kept a handful of those devices on hand at all times in order to ensure it crafted something that functions well in virtual reality.
The film shows filmmakers and manufacturers what can be achieved with a high-end 360-degree camera like Facebook's Surround 360. The prototype device used to film the Grand Central video is a 17-camera array unveiled in April as a reference design at Facebook's F8 developers conference.
Facebook does not plan to sell a finished product. If others would try to build their own version of the Surround 360, they would need to spend around $30,000 to buy the materials. Facebook will make freely available online this summer the camera design and stitching software.
