South Africa based Habitat XR offer a look into their production and stitching workflow with Insta360 Pro2, Mantis Sub, and Mistika VR.

The Mantis Sub product family has expanded!

Our customers asked for practical solutions to underwater 360 lighting and live-streaming, and we are excited to deliver!

In this newsletter:

• New Products

• New 360 Video

• 360 Video Tips & Tricks

The Mantis team created a VR diving simulator to share the experience of diving a real world cave, which we reconstructed from 360 video. People that have dived the real cave and played the simulator consistently reported how real it felt to dive it in VR.

The combination of 360 video, 3D reconstruction and VR simulation can create powerful immersive and interactive training experiences. The viewer can interact with objects and experience environmental effects like water currents and other forces, and practice their response to them.

The New Zealand Virtual Reality Project (NZVR) was started five years ago to give young Kiwis a virtually real experience of their wild places, particularly underwater. In that time the team has delivered a million VR experiences over web, social and in schools.

“To get the real effect of a virtual experience, you have to feel like you’re really there,” says the project’s Director of Photographer Richard Robinson. “So most of the shots are by remote... hanging a camera under a drone, propping it up on a tripod, swinging it under a mooring float... anything to get the camera operator out of the picture.”

Case Study: Richard Robinson

Richard Robinson has been shooting underwater VR since 2016—from the frigid waters of the subantarctic islands to the searing heat of the tropics.

“To get the real effect of a virtual experience, you have to feel like you’re really there,” says Robinson. “So most of the shots are by remote... hanging a camera under a drone, propping it up on a tripod, swinging it under a mooring float... anything to get me out of the picture.”

Mantis Sub opens the realm of 3D production to professional underwater VR producers. To date, underwater VR cameras and housings have been either monoscopic, or the price and size of a new car. The producers of the NZVR Project wanted an alternative that could meet demanding professional production standards, offer 3D stereoscopy, and do it in a compact, affordable, robust housing that was good to 90 metres.