Nokia’s VR camera will cost $60,000 and will be released in early 2016

The virtual reality camera OZO from Nokia, announced at the end of July, is available for pre-order and will be delivered in the first quarter of 2016. In addition, Nokia announced the specifications of the device equipped with eight cameras and eight microphones.

The spherical device with a protruding ‘tail’ houses eight synchronized cameras with sensors of 2000×2000 pixels. This allows a fully spherical 360×180-degree image to be recorded. To be able to record another spherical image, the minimum distance to an object is 50 centimeters. Each camera has a lens with a 195-degree angle of view and f/2.4 at a base ISO of 400 and a dynamic range of 10 stops.

Not only does the OZO capture the image in 360 degrees, the sound is also completely spacious with eight omnidirectional solid-state microphones. All of that is packed into a mov container with 8ch raw video and 8ch pcm audio. The storage takes place in the ‘tail’ on an SSD with a storage capacity of 500GB. The storage module is removable and can record 45 minutes per module at 30fps.

The stream from the camera can be viewed in real-time via an HDMI output or via stereoscopic VR render outputs. The image is rendered at 8kx10k. The whole weighs 4.2 kg including battery with an aluminum alloy casing. All of that measures 264x170x160mm without mount and can be controlled by applications for OS X 10.10. The camera itself costs at the time of writing $ 60,000 or just under 57,000 euros. Accessories such as the cartridge that also serves directly as a battery are also expensive. The cartridge costs $5,000, an in-cartridge media module costs $2,500 and the docking station costs $1,500.

Nokia reports that a partnership has also been set up with Jaunt. This will initially involve support using the camera in Jaunt Studios and supporting content produced by the OZO in Jaunt’s post-production line.