Canon has been busy leading the way for camera brands in the Virtual Reality space recently. The RF 5.2mm Dual fisheye lens was groundbreaking when it launched because it was the first professional-level lens created specifically for making VR180 videos. However, Canon even admits that the new Apple Vision Pro is too high res for any current cameras to film footage for.

Even when coupled with the Canon EOS R5 C, which can shoot 8K RAW video at 60 FPS, it’s not enough for the Apple headset. The minimum resolution and frame rate required for a fully immersive VR experience is 8K (4K for each eye). The Apple Vision Pro would need a refresh rate equivalent to around 14K to fully take advantage of its caperbilities.

Canon officials admitted as much to Petapixel at the CP+ camera show in Yokohama, Japan, last week. The issue isn’t so much the resolution as the refresh rate that the Apple Pro Res needs. Canon says that there isn’t a camera yet capable of that, at least not one that most people can access.

The Sphere in Las Vegas apparently has a camera capable of shooting 18K video. However, it also requires a team of twelve people to operate it and costs millions of dollars. Hardly the home entertainment democracy that VR video is looking for. Even shooting 8K RAW at 60fps causes a headache with storage and computing power, as we discovered.

In some VR forums, there has been speculation about what Apple used to create the immersive videos for the Vision Pro, such as the Behind The Scenes video of Alicia Keyes rehearsing. Some people have guessed that Apple used a RED camera and modified the RF 5.2mm fisheye lens to fit.

“At the moment, Canon can’t cater to that level of a requirement,” Canon’s Yoshoko Shiomi told Petapixel. However, Senior Managing Executive Officer and Deputy Head of the Imaging Group at Canon, Go Takura, noted that “technically, theoretically, we can do that.”

Canon already has a 100mp resolution image sensor. However, it isn’t yet able to film at 60fps, which is important for filming realistic VR footage. Any less than 60fps and the brain starts to misinterpret what it’s seeing, creating nausea and disorientation in viewers.

Consumer grade VR cameras

The other issue, of course, is making this technology simple and affordable enough for enough people to create videos with it. Canon seems to be teasing us with a consumer level 8K VR VR180/360 camera prototype, and has increased the number of cameras that can work with the dual fisheye lens recently. However, these new cameras will not be as high spec and cannot shoot 8K at 60fps.

Anecdotally, several VR enthusiasts I know have actually returned their Apple Vision Pro because it is designed more for spatial computing than for immersive VR experiences. Even Mark Zuckerberg says he prefers the Meta Quest 3 headset, although he can’t really be relied on for an unbiased opinion.

“We are polishing our technology so that we can provide the high resolution for the VR purposes,” Shiomi said to Petapixel. “So we will continue trying to improve our technology so that we can improve both resolution and speed with a good balance.”

It’s a case of ‘watch this space’ essentially. Presumably, Canon will keep developing its high-end VR hardware and, at the same time, make the technology available at the lower end for consumer-level creators. Exciting stuff for virtual reality and spatial computing!

[via apple insider]