Samsung announces Project Beyond, a 360-degree 3D camera that creates virtual reality worlds

TheVerge.comI reports that Samsung just announced Project Beyond at its 2014 Developer Conference — it’s a 360-degree camera module that captures everything around it in 3D. It captures a gigapixel of 3D footage every second, and can stream that footage back to someone wearing Samsung’s Gear VR headset, essentially transporting them into that world. Essentially, Project Beyond continuously creates a virtual 3D environment of wherever it is placed — Samsung said people would be able to tune in live or record footage to be viewed at any time. In a lot of ways it feels like the cameras seen on a Google Street View backpack, but much smaller and more portable. It’s otherwise a pretty unique (and surely expensive) piece of hardware.

Samsung has already taken the camera all around San Francisco and other locations in California to record footage that can be viewed within the Gear VR, and the company should be showing it off at the Developer Conference today — visitors should be able to put on a Gear VR headset and experience some of the footage that’s been recorded with this camera. Details were minimal, but we’ll be going to check out Project Beyond as soon as Samsung’s keynote presentation is finished.

There’s an update at http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/12/7205289/samsung-annonces-project-beyond-a-360-degree-3d-camera