22/11/2025
We are testing a concept of building a 360 degree rig from Insta360 Ace Pro actions cameras. We did not know that after we bought its version 1 just a few days ago that Insta360 was planning to sell an ultra wide lens for Insta360 Ace Pro 2 version of this camera. We simply went for Ace Pro 1 because it is over $100 cheaper while it has the same sensors as Pro 2.
Otherwise we would wait till lens became available and bought version 2. It can reduce number of cameras required to build almost full 360x180 panorama from 12 to just 4.
However we have its version one and we can rotate it on a rotator just for testing quality of resulted pano. Since it was shot as a singe row at 60 degree each position it comes as 360x109 degree. We were using 16:9 aspect without HDR which reduces each photo from 48MP to 36MP. it seems to produce 21K pano in horizontal resolution.
See it posted on kuula in 16K as it is a maximum kuula allows on a free account. A minimum post processing done to it and it is almost as PTGUI stitched and processed it. Raw(dng) files have been used.
The plans are simple, test what we have now and if we are happy with it we will start buying Ace pro 2 cameras with ultra wide lenses to build a rig that can capture clear 360 videos in resolution well over 16K and have an option to do 360 photos in any environment including those where people walk around or cars moving. And it is all well under AU$3500.
When ultra wide lens becomes available we will buy one set( Ace Pro2 and ultrawide lens) and test it with rotating the cam the same way as we have just done with Ace Pro 1 and built in lens. New lens has 189 degree of diagonal FOV and according to our calculations should cover 179 degree vertically and about 110 horizontally so we should get almost the full sphere with just four positions. That reduces numbers of cameras required for the rig from 12 to just 4/5. We hope to get away with four and optical stitching using Mistika VR for videos and Ptgui for 360 photos.
Insta360 Ace Pro(v1) action cam panorama. Original resolution over 21K. Reduced to 16K for displaying on kuula. 1 row, 6 position at 60 degree each. Captured in 16:9 acpect ratio in dewarp mode
