Facebook held its F8 developer conference in San Francisco earlier today, and among the many interesting quotes, 10-year-plans, and new service announcements, the world’s largest social networking company also found the time to unveil a new 360-degree camera ring called the Facebook Surround 360 that looks very much like the Imperial probe droid we first saw in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. I’m not kidding.
Fortunately, this camera isn’t being used to hunt down Rebels (yet). Instead, Facebook says it will make available “all the hardware and software blueprints…by the end of this summer,” in hopes that people will build models of their own to shoot hi-def 360 VR and 3D content for—where else?—Facebook the social network.
Facebook’s version, which is sort of an aspirational archetype, consists of 17 hi-res cameras with 2048×2048 resolution and 60 fps. You can read more about the specs and such here thanks to Popular Science‘s Dave Gershgorn who was there at the event. Meanwhile, don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here hiding in my Tauntaun skin.