Lucid VR, the makers of the stereoscopic 3D camera LucidCam, today announced a seed funding round to the tune of $2.1M, bringing a significant raise in funds to the team’s successful Indiegogo campaign which attracted over $100,000 in funds over the course of November and December of last year.

Partnering with Wistron Corporation, a Taiwan-based ODM (original design manufacturer) that makes mobile tech under Microsoft’s Android patents, Lucid VR will be delivering the now Wistron-produced cameras to campaign backers and pre-order customers alike. Including Wistron, Lucid VR has received funds from S2 Capital, Lab360, TEEC Angel Fund, 17 Miles Technology and other angel investors.

Last fall we went hands-on with a prototype of the pocket-sized stereoscopic 3D camera. Road to VR’s Executive Editor Ben Lang reported that the video output “looks quite sharp compared to 360 degree devices—as the pixels are more densely concentrated in front, rather than stretching all the way around you—and there’s no need to stitch multiple camera views together, eliminating potentially unsightly seams…”

LucidCam offers 60 fps, 2K per-eye resolution video (4K per-eye photos) with 180-degrees FOV for each eye, so while you’ll only be getting half of the visual field offered by 360 cameras, the perceived image quality is remarkably better, and in stereoscopic 3D. Dual microphones also allow for binaural sound capture.

See Also: LucidCam is a Sleek 3D 180 Camera for VR Video, IndieGogo Campaign Live

While you can technically mount three LucidCams together to attain 360-degree 3D capture, the camera’s small form-factor—about the size of a glasses case—is one of the camera’s biggest selling points. To its credit, the single ‘pocketable’ front-facing LucidCam lets you shoot video and photos in a way you’re already familiar with, and while this isn’t necessarily paradigm-shifting, the current pre-order price of $399 is sure to capture the attention of VR enthusiasts looking to get their hands on what amounts to a high-quality, and fairly inexpensive stereoscopic camera.

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LucidCam was created over the last two years by serial entrepreneur Han Jin, and his co-founder and company CTO Adam Rowell, a Stanford PhD in electrical engineering who is specialized in computer vision and image processing. Coupled with Wistron, a global Fortune 500 company with $20B revenue, LucidCam will be going into mass production and delivering to customers in the later half of 2016.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Maria da Cunha

    2K per-eye resolution video is not good enough!

    • kalqlate

      The CURRENT generation of VR headsets have half the resolution and half the FOV, so this camera is about a perfect fit for them. In these headsets, looking at photos and videos from this camera, you’ll be able to look a little to the left and a little to the right, which will give a sense of immersion and presence.

      • Maria da Cunha

        “Half the FOV”?

        • kalqlate

          Yes, the Rift and Vive have about half the field of view, between 90 and 110, of this camera’s 180.

    • Better 2k in 180 than 4k in 360. Check your self quaility between this and other cameras.

  • TaxPayer

    It will be cool to watch youtube videos in VR though, the potential is amazing.

  • OhYeah!

    60 fps is not good enough, they need at least 90 and 120 would give them a little more breathing room for the future.

    • TaxPayer

      its early though, beta beats perfect

    • Albert Walzer

      60 FPS video is enough source material/quality to interpolate up to 144 Hz in Premiere. Yes, the Plugin that calculates the interframes is pretty costly, but the results are pretty awesome.
      On the playback side of things i use SVP to make videos smooth, but it’s a b*tch to setup and runs on the CPU mostly…. plus quality is not perfect (soap effect) in realtime, but good enough for me :)

    • ALL Other 180 or 360 cameras are 30fps, and less detailed (and more expensive). This is the ONE with 60fps.

  • JrSlims

    You ever tilt your head while watching a 3D movie? It “breaks.” Similar idea here, except it would essentially be the movie screen tilting and not your head. A handheld stereoscopic video camera is not the greatest idea unless they have some new tech going into it, like some sort of balancing algorithm. The angles they’re showing the camera at in the pictures themselves wouldn’t give a good stereo image.

    • Test yourself with the demo videos

  • Daz_Genetic

    I want to be able to stick this to the front of the Oculus for full stereoscopic pass-through camera action.

    • You…you know you can just take off the…nevermind.

      • beestee

        The real noodle baker is would it qualify as augmented reality even without any overlays?

        Blue pill please. Maybe Cypher had it right all along?

  • Francois Bou

    Can we watch a demo ?

    • Just download Lucid app on google play.

  • stickleZ

    Try the Google Cardboard app they launched that demos the footage. It is actually pretty amazing, and I am not a fan of 360 videos. I would love on Oculus or Vive to be able to walk in and out, closer to the footage.

    This is totally how I’d love to capture footage of my kids, etc , less about using it for professional things

  • Finally it will be the FIRST RV video at 60fps, and in combination of 3D it will be the best RV camera for its price, or even for double price :)

  • beestee

    I just received an update through indiegogo that expected shipment was pushed from July 2016 to December 2016. The update also pointed out that the specs of the shipping device, in particular resolution and framerate are double what was initially detailed in the campaign, backers will essentially be getting a version 2.0 Lucid Cam. The new specs match what has already been detailed in this article.