Nokia's OZO is the Finnish Company's 8 Camera Step into the Virtual Reality Market

In first quarter of 2016, Nokia will start selling the OZO, its virtual reality camera at $60,000 each. Primarily targeted at major production companies, the product allows 3D video and 360-degree live feed. The camera is Nokia's entry into the virtual reality market.

Shaped like a ball, and the size of the Nokia OZO camera creates 360-degree spherical video through its eight synchronized global shutter sensors for each of its 2K by 2K resolution cameras, creating stereoscopic video. The camera, a little smaller than a soccer ball, weighs in at 9.3 lbs with the battery and has its eight cameras spaced so that they are the distance between a human's eyes, creating a 195 degree field of view for each lens.

Wired's Maurizio Pesce talked with Vesa Rantanen, head of research and development at Nokia Technologies. Pesce emphasized the need for OZO's multiple microphones saying, "Since audio is at least half of the virtual reality experience, we've built eight microphones into OZO for 3D audio capture. These microphones will work together to produce 360 x 360 surround sound audio.

To view the camera's video, directors and producers can watch the live feed through OZO's Virtual Reality monitor. The monitor at this time is currently supplied by other manufactures such as Samsungs's Gear VR and HTC Vive. Eventually these monitors could be the way people experience events like races, performances, or sporting events without needing to leave home.

That live monitoring is one of the key features that make the OZO a perfect tool for filmmakers. As The Verge explains, on any film or TV set, directors and cinematographers need to see what they're capturing while they're filming. Since traditionally VR needs some lead time to stich together the images, the filmmakers would have to wait before analyzing what they captured.

First announced in July 2015, the device puts Nokia against such companies as GoPro, who has partnered with Google, and Samsung's Project Beyond in creating a commercial VR camera. GoPro currently offers a camera rig, in conjunction with Google's VR platform Jump, which takes 16 individual GoPro's and controls them as one. Samsung's Project Beyond camera is similar to OZO in that it's one singular unit, but still uses 16 HD cameras housed in a donut-like shaped casing.

During an interview with VentureBeat, Ramzi Haidamus, president of Nokia Technologies presented the future of the camera by referencing a famous Canon product.

"What is the virtual reality equivalent of the Canon 5D camera?"

Haidamus believes the next step will be creating cameras similar to the capabilities of the OZO at a price point that will be targeted to the "prosumer" customer, but that won't happen for another few years. For now, Nokia, now acquired by Microsoft, views their OZO camera as its first step into a different field of media and entertainment.