Meta Four used on ‘Touching the Sky VR’

Our new stereoscopic 360° system, the Meta Four, helped capture high-alpine paragliding and wingsuit sequences for Meta and Red Bull’s VR release, enabling high quality picture, clean stitches and natural depth on headset.

Touching the Sky VR is a collaboration between Meta and Red Bull, produced by Jonathan Griffith Productions and featuring paraglider Aaron Durogati and wingsuit pilot Fred Fugen. The film places viewers inside big-mountain air. For that to feel convincing in a headset, stereo has to be comfortable and the stitch invisible. They needed a camera they could rely on to capture stunning content in some of the most extreme conditions in the world.

THE PROBLEM – High altitude brings cold, wind, and weight limits. Variable cloud cover brings the need for high dynamic range. Turbulence and rig drag push camera systems hard; parallax errors are unforgiving when cameras are moving dramatically. The team needed high quality capture that would deliver a stable, low-fatigue stereo experience.

THE APPROACH – The Meta Four was originally designed and built for this production. Built for modern headsets, the rig balances natural 3D and high quality lenses and sensors to produce clean, comfortable stereo with robust stitches. The sensors and lenses are as close together as they can physically be, close to the human inter-pupillary distance. This is vital for getting real and comfortable 3D.

THE RESULT – The released VR experience, along with the production’s behind-the-scenes film, shows the Meta Four operating in demanding conditions, producing stunning results and delivering the kind of stereo you can watch for long sequences. For directors and post teams, that means not only the ultimate quality per pixel but also fewer surprises in stitch, less time fixing parallax, and a truer sense of scale when viewed in-headset.

Watch the VR experience here.

Watch the behind the scenes here.