SLAM is the first VR180 phone (sample videos)

SLAM is the world’s first phone with a VR180 camera.  Here’s the trailer:

Sample videos?

SLAM has a channel on DeoVR, although I don’t know for sure if the videos there were actually from the SLAM phone.  To view the videos in VR180, please download the free DeoVR app for Quest or other VR headset.  On the DeoVR app, go to DeoVR.com and search for “slam”.  You should see several videos uploaded by a user “Slam VR180 phone.”

I viewed the videos and the stereo depth is good enough in my opinion, and it appears that the left eye and right eye are well synchronized. Here’s a screenshot from the Meta Quest app.

However, the compression was very high especially in low light photos, although I don’t know if this is because of the phone or because of DeoVR.

Some of the videos were shot well (e.g. the basketball video) but some of the videos didn’t use normal VR180 shooting techniques.  The videos were sometimes tilted, the camera was moving around a lot, and in one video (video of a person playing Genshin Impact), the shooter was shooting from less than one foot away which caused serious eye strain.   Be warned.

VR180 vs iPhone 15 Spatial Video

How does VR180 compare to the Spatial Video capture capability of the iPhone 15 Pro?  Very few people have tried Spatial Video as of December 2023, and the ones that have tried it don’t seem to be able to describe it precisely, but one thing is certain: Apple’s Spatial Video has a limited field of view similar to a typical smartphone lens (around 28mm equivalent).  VR180 has a much wider 180-degree field of view that fills their vision, which enables the viewer to look up, down, left or right.

VR180 is also compatible with many viewers, including almost all VR headsets, whereas Spatial Video is designed to be viewed only on the $3500 Apple Vision Pro.

Finally, VR180 can be shared on YouTube, Facebook and other platforms, whereas Spatial Video can only be shared to Apple Vision Pro.

Stereo baseline (interocular distance)

One of the unusual design choices with the SLAM is the stereo baseline (the distance between the two lenses).  For 3D cameras, the distance between the lenses determines the depth of the 3D effect.  Ideally it should be around 65mm — the same as the average interpupillary distance (distance between pupils).  In the case of SLAM, the two cameras seem to be around 1.5 inches apart (I estimate around 38mm).  This means that the 3D effect will be less prominent.   If instead SLAM had put the fisheye lenses with the phone in landscape orientation, then there would have been more than enough space to put the lenses 65mm apart to provide more natural depth.

Risk of crowdfunding

SLAM is being crowdfunded on Indiegogo, and once again, crowdfunding is not the same as ordering a product.  If you order a product and don’t get it, you can contact your credit card company to do a chargeback.  On the other hand, if you back a crowdfunding project, what you’re doing is investing money in the company with the hope that they actually produce the product.  If they don’t, backers have virtually no remedies.

Even if the company actually produces the product, it might also be delayed by several years, at which point the product could become obsolete.  This is a particularly significant concern for high-tech products.

In this case, SLAM is a high-tech product, which has a higher risk of failure.  We also don’t know anything yet about the company.  Startups are much more likely to fail (here’s a recent example) than an established company with a track record of successful products.

My suggestion with high-risk crowdfunded projects is just wait instead for the product to be released.   But won’t you miss out on the 29% discount?  True, but if you back the project and it’s never produced, you lose all your money.  Here’s the math:  let’s say the normal cost of the phone is X.  With this campaign, you can get it for 0.71X (29% discount).  This means you are risking 71 to gain 29, which implies that you need to be at least 71% confident that they will succeed.

Other options

If you want to capture stereoscopic content, the best option for consumers right now in my opinion is Qoocam Ego (see review).