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GoPro 16 Camera Rig for Google Jump VR Will Cost $15,000

If you want that Jump rig now, ready up some big bucks

Sep 8, 2015 13:33 GMT  ·  By
GoPro Odyssey isn't really a cheap heap of cameras on a platter
   GoPro Odyssey isn't really a cheap heap of cameras on a platter

After launching Jump as a platform for VR video back in May, Google has contacted GoPro to design together the Odyssey camera rig. It took a couple of months to allow interested creatives to get early access to the hardware.

Unfortunately, it will be in very limited numbers, and it will be available only for professional partners, read Google Maps, police surveillance companies. And to prove all of this, the eye cost of this thing is eye-watering: $15,000 (€13,408).

So what would you get when spending that amount of money, instead of buying a brand new car? Well, 16 Hero4 Black GoPros, connectivity mounts for each camera, cables, memory cards, a pelican case, and obviously the cylindrical rig itself, which is basically a platter on which you install the GoPros.

Combine that all up, and you've got yourself a rig that shoots 2.7K video in 4:3 aspect ratio with about 360-degree/3D experience. It's true that besides that users will also get a video "assembler" that will stitch all your footage together to create a seamless globe. Additionally, there is a player on YouTube that will include support for viewing it all in Cardboard in stereoscopic/3D, or regular "flat" viewing via desktop or YouTube app, obviously without Cardboard.

You'll be charged $15,000 for 16 cameras and one supporting platter

Apparently, the 16 cameras are the minimum needed in order to use Jump properly, and the assembler software. All the combined cameras will provide an output of 2K x 2K over/under panoramic MPEG4 video with bandwidth of 150Mbit/s or 8K x 8K at 600Mbit/s.

Although this isn't GoPro's only spherical video solution, since it’s developing its own separate device based on six cameras instead of sixteen, it's clear that efforts are being made to develop interesting new concepts together with larger companies, for profit.

Users interested in applying to get the new device can get involved on Odyssey's official website and only residents from countries like U.S., Canada, UK, the EU, Japan, or Brazil are eligible for the early access.