Recommendations for pro-grade 360 cams?

Contributing and equipment 360° cameras
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Hey all, I’m currently in the market for a 360 cam, and I’m trying to find something a bit higher end. I have experience using the GoPro Max, and I think it’s a wonderful consumer-grade 360 cam, but I was wondering if others had experience with higher end alternatives.

Thanks.

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I have been using an insta 360 X3. I am very happy with it but don’t have others to compare to. I am going to write a bit about it soon.

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Depends on your budget/definition of “higher end”.
insta360 Pro’s (1 or 2) are generally considered to be a gold standard for consumer-friendly Pro cameras, and both have been used with Mapillary.
You could go higher, eg NCTech or Ladybug, but they get more proprietary and incidentally more difficult to use with Mapillary

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Looking forward to reading about your experiences!!

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I am curious as to why an NCTech or Ladybug would necessarily be more difficult to use with Mapillary. Assuming the appropriate offline license is purchased (in the case of NCTech), geocoded JPG images can be produced and uploaded just as with a cheaper camera.

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Last time I checked on NCTech (admittedly some time ago), they required use of their cloud processing to get the imagery. Ladybug I seem to remember a more complicated workflow

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This is still true for NCTech as far as I am aware, but you can purchase a $4000 yearly or $10,000 perpetual license to allow local processing.

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Camera specs aside (Iris was better than Insta Pro from memory), I’m not sure if I’d pay this much to be locked to one camera manufacturer

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NCTech offers the cheapest option that will work for our use case. :smile:

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I have now written about the camera in general and about the upload process.

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I have use Insta360 Pro 2 and Insta 360 Titan.

The image quality is good on the Titan, but the software from Insta360 for the Pro/Titan is really bad, especially if you want to use an external GNSS trace, like I do.

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Thanks, that’s very useful info, and correlates with what I’ve seen re Insta360 software quality.
Do you have example imagery links for Pro 2/Titan? Is Titan much better than Pro/Pro2 for image detail (ie is the price difference worth it)?

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Here are some sequences with the Titan:

I had some problems on two sequences:

  • One in which I had to use the low resolution file (my mistake)
  • Another one with some problems during the stitching. It looks like an intermittent bug in the Titan. Insta360 gave me no solution or explanation. Example: Mapillary
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Hm, detail seems slightly better than the Pro, but yeah I thought stitching would be better for this price

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The stitching problem is on only one sequence. I suspect a problem inside the Titan (one sensor with a frame offset).

The quality is really better than the Insta 360 Pro 2.

Just for fun, on the same place:

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I saw some small stitching artifacts on the other sequence (could be due to weird building texture).

It’s better than Pro, but given the price difference is doesn’t seem to be that much better. Prices for these are still very high. I use 4x Hero5s and get reasonable detail, for a fraction of the cost

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Hi good evening, I also have a Titan. We tried to perform the stitching with its “Insta360Stitcher” software and the resulting file, in MP4 format, is well digested by Google Street View. On the Mapillary desktop uploader I am told that it is unable to find the GPX track in the MP4 file. How did you solve it?

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@protezionecivilefvgr Uploading Insta videos are documented at this help article. https://help.mapillary.com/hc/en-us/articles/11951588568604-Insta360-X3

Please let me know if it works for you