Almost a year ago in May, GoPro CEO Nick Woodman revealed that the company is entering new categories with upcoming products such as a six-camera spherical array, which would be used to capture high-resolution video and pictures for virtual reality purposes.
The array is apparently finally ready to be unveiled, with the Omni set to be showcased at the upcoming NAB conference in Las Vegas from April 18 to April 21.
Through the Omni array, users will be able to have six Hero4 Black cameras team up to capture virtual reality content. The company added that proprietary hardware located at the Omni's center will enable the pixel-level synchronization needed for the six cameras to work in unison.
The company said that in addition to the Omni, it will be showing new spherical content and other professional solutions at its booth at NAB 2016.
The price of the GoPro Omni has not been revealed, though just the six Hero4 Black cameras will already cost about $3,000. The array will also work with Kolor, the virtual reality software that GoPro acquired in April 2015 that will allow users to put together the content recorded by the Omni into a unified 6K spherical image.
The launch of the Omni would lead to more refined 360-degree videos. While there are several options for less than $1,000 that are out in the market today that have such capabilities, the video quality of these devices tend to be poor. With the Omni powered by six Hero4 Black cameras, quality will not be a problem, leading to greater appeal for users to dive into virtual reality.
However, another venture into virtual reality by GoPro, the 16-camera Odyssey, is still notably missing. The rig, which will also hold Hero4 Black cameras and will have a price tag of $15,000, is designed to work with Google's Jump platform.
The Odyssey was expected to be launched in November 2015, but up until now, it has not yet been released. GoPro had been talking with people in the virtual reality industry regarding the equipment, but the talks have stalled in January with GoPro going dark on the project.
The delayed launch of the Odyssey shows the difficulty for GoPro to expand beyond its extreme sports usage, in addition to Google's challenges in taking on rivals such as Facebook in the burgeoning but lucrative consumer virtual reality technology.
For GoPro, it is hoping that the Omni would find great success compared to the early trials that the Odyssey is already facing.
