GoPro Omni – GoPro’s New VR Platform and Pricing Now Available

April 19^th, 201616

by Olaf von VossApril 19^th, 2016

In the middle of this year’s NAB show, GoPro have announced a newly developed VR platform which goes alongside their brand new smaller VR rig, the GoPro Omni camera rig which will sell for $4,999 – with everything you need for capturing 360° footage included.

The GoPro Omni Camera Rig: A smaller approach

The GoPro Omni camera rig is a much smaller rig than the larger Odyssey 16 rig, which is more focused on the professional market with a price tag of $15,000. The Omni camera rig will sell for $4,999, with everything included, 6 GoPro Hero4 black cameras and all the mounting to line up these cameras correctly. As an alternative, if you happen to have six spare GoPro camera lying around, you can purchase the bare bones cage only, for $1,499,99.

According to GoPro’s press-release “proprietary hardware at the center of Omni enables pixel-level synchronization between all six HERO4 Black cameras.”

Other features:

Six cameras act as one: Interact with the primary camera in the array to configure settings or initiate the start/stop of recording for all six cameras.
The proven image quality of the HERO4 Black…times six: Produce high-res images that virtual reality viewers will notice. Omni may also be used for “over capture”; capture at 8K and extract an HD deliverable.
Optimized workflow: capture using Omni, use GoPro Omni Importer for preview, data management, and rendering, fine tune the content in Kolor Autopano® Video, then proof the content in GoPro VR player and publish it to the GoPro VR website.
By collaborating with Adobe®, GoPro further solves the pain points of editing spherical content by enabling native handling of 360-degree video up to 8K resolution within Adobe® Premiere® Pro CC, and Adobe After Effects® CC.

The all-inclusive Omni package includes:

One GoPro Omni Sync Rig
GoPro Kolor Software License
Six GoPro Hero4 Black cameras and batteries
GoPro Smart Remote
Six GoPro Mini USB Cables, 32GB microSD Cards and card readers
Ultra compact, rugged shipping case

The SKU includes:

GoPro Omni Sync Rig
Waterproof Shipping Case
Plastic Tweezers
Microfiber Bag
2.5mm Hex Key

The new platform

Alongside the new Omni camera rig, GoPro announced a new web platform called GoPro VR. This platform will be accompanied by free apps which will be available for both iOS and Android. According to GoPro, the new platform is a place to showcase and share VR content. The GoPro VR platform is a refined version of the existing Kolor Eyes platform (Blog post).

a platform to view and share immersive content. The platform allows users to experience the immersive world of 360˚ video and transforms users’ screens into a virtual portal, showcasing original content from GoPro and a global community of artists. GoPro VR is available on the web, free mobile app, or experienced on a mobile head-mounted display.

The apps will be able to work with VR headsets as well for a better VR experience than just dragging the mouse (or a finger) around on a video screen.

Editing the footage in GoPro Kolor and showcase it on the GoPro VR platform

Competitors

For nearly $1.500 the bare bones cage of the Omni camera rig is not the cheapest solution out there. Other manufacturers offer similar platforms for much cheaper – such as the 360Hero Pro6 360° rig, which sells for $495. But it is clear that the Omni camera rig is a more advanced piece of gear since it has a proprietary hardware controller built in. Time will tell how seamless the process from capturing to stitching and final delivery will be.

It seems like GoPro has a hard time to deal with the progress other manufacturers make in the field of action and sports cameras. We will see if VR is the next big thing and if GoPro is ready to hold their promises with this new line up of products and services.

Both the all-inclusive Omni camera cage rig package and the bare bones package will be shipping around August 17th.