360 rumors

​ The Lollapalooza annual music festival will be held this weekend from July 28 to July 31, 2016 at Grant Park, Chicago, IL.  Samsung wants to enhance the experience for Galaxy smartphone owners who are attending the festival.  Among other benefits, Samsung will offer "VR-Palooza," a VR experience that includes 360 livestreaming from the Samsung Stage using the Samsung Gear VR , and "4D VR" surfing, skateboarding, and hot air balloon VR experiences.  Samsung will also make limited quantities of the Samsung Gear 360 camera (reviewed here)  available for purchase for $349.99. To participate, you'll need to activate your Lollapalooza wristband here .

Vuze (previewed here) , the first fully spherical 360 3D camera for consumers, just uploaded another sample on Facebook. I was very impressed with the stitching, which looked perfectly seamless.  I don't know if the stitching in this case was automatic, or was customized (and if it was customized, I don't know if the included software would allow customization).  I do know that one of their recent videos, of an Austrian concert , had excellent stitching as well. Separate from the stitching, the image quality was also quite good.  I watched the video on the phone and also on the Gear VR.  There was excellent level of detail for the singer.  The piano and the other instruments had less detail because they were farther, but there was still a reasonable level of detail. The color for this sample video was much better and more realistic than the color in the Austrian concert video. There was some glare, which I expected due to the very strong light sources.  (No...