The Nokia (News - Alert) OZO is a 360-degree stereoscopic camera designed to bring virtual reality to life and address the content side of a technology that is still trying to find a market. When Nokia introduced the camera in late 2015, it was priced at $60,000, but as of April 2017 the price has gone down to $40,000 and the company has announced several upgrades to the software to make it more accessible and user-friendly. The OZO Reality vision and partner ecosystem will introduce solutions for the creative community and a partner ecosystem to bring in more vendors and make the technology available to a wider audience.
Nokia announced the new features at the NAB Show in Las Vegas. Nokia hopes the features will introduce new levels of immersion to consumers along with creative possibilities for more vivid and immersive storytelling, as well as next-generation communications services that will bring people closer together.
“There is virtual reality, and then there is OZO Reality: our vision for the future of virtual and mixed reality experiences, seamlessly blending the real with the virtual and transcending time and space. We are developing new innovations that work together to empower storytellers, enable audiences to participate in content anywhere on any platform, and deliver on the promise of transformative experiences that help the human family feel more together,” said Paul Melin, VP of Digital Media, Nokia Technologies.
Nokia says the virtual and augmented reality market is set to hit $100 billion in less than a decade. This will see the technology deployed across all industry segments to deliver more realistic next generation communications, medical care, conferencing, education and many other services.
The OZO product line-up will include a comprehensive system update, including a completely updated VR image processing and stereoscopic software with mixed reality enablement, OZO+, OZO Creator, OZO Live and OZO Audio. Together these updates will introduce scalable 3D 360 livestream solution, spatial audio mixing and the unique spatial audio, generational advancements in image quality and efficiency in the creative process.
The immersive experiences are going to be augmented with the new OZO Reality Platform, including OZO Deliver, OZO Player SDK, and Nokia VR format extensions to reach a larger audience with delivery and playback interoperability with partners that will advance the technology forward.
Nokia has formed partnerships with Accedo, Akamai (News - Alert), AWS Elemental, China Intercontinental Communication Center (CICC), Ratio, Qello, Youku and many others to address content creation and to deliver an end-user experience that drives the acceleration and adoption of OZO Reality.
