App feature request: capture with front and rear cameras simultaneously

Mobile apps
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Hi there!

I’ve recently been looking into 360-degree cameras. It’s not really something I can afford. But it got me thinking that, if I’m capturing imagery with the Mapillary smartphone app while walking with a selfie stick held upright, it could be really useful to capture imagery from both the front and the rear cameras. It wouldn’t be a full 360 degrees, but it’s still going to capture more data for less work.

Is there any chance this feature could be added to the app? I’m particularly interested in the iOS app. Surely the front camera on any recent iPhone is more than adequate for Mapillary captures. And I’m pretty sure there’s no performance concerns in capturing photos front and rear on the iPhone, as iOS recently gained the ability to record both cameras to a picture-in-picture video. Do developers also have the ability to aces both cameras simultaneously?

Edit: I just realised this was already discussed in 2016. But I wonder if technological advancements of the past 10 years have made this more doable?

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cc @Anders

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Back in 2016 the iOS APIs only allowed for a single camera session being active at a time. It was technically possible to fake it by switching between cameras every frame, but it was just a messy hack. Nowadays there are offical APIs that allow multiple camera being used at the same time, so it’s definitely doable. It’s still device-dependent but most of the new iPhones can do it. More info about the APIs: AVCaptureMultiCamSession | Apple Developer Documentation

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Thanks for bringing this old idea up again! I’ll loop in our PM @boris

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Thanks, Anders.

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Thank you for the feature request folks - it looks technically feasible! (though maybe not very common as a use case)

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You may be right. But provided one has enough storage space, I think this feature would be ideal just about any time one walks around with a selfie stick, if a 360 camera isn’t available.

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