This was a test of my new Samsung Gear 360 (2017) camera and Zoom H2n spatial audio recorder. If this works you should be able to hear the sound scape move as you move your head if you view this video using a VR headset or with Google Cardboard and earphones. This should give the most immersive experience possible.

In general I am very happy with the camera except for two major and one minor points.

First the images are already quite processed to give high contrast. i.e. blacks and whites are pressed removing fine detail to give the look of real film. The video here is as it came from the camera and is unprocessed. This is OK for me because the images look very much like I would have processed them as anyways but it means that information in the dark and bright regions of the image are lost reducing editing choices if one wanted to highlight detail in either of these regions.

Second the camera is mounted with a 1/4 inch screw mount. I discovered that after a few landings the screw had loosened and the camera twisted about 20 to 30 degrees counter clockwise. This means the spatial audio is not synchronised with the view direction at the end of the video. I am doing this as a hobby and do not want to spend a lot of money on tools to adjust the view angle but in theory this could be fixed. For future videos I will invest in a lock washer which I hope will help keep the camera aligned properly.

The more minor point though still relevant is that you will see a high amount of noise visible in the darker regions of the video. I believe this is an artefact of the darker cargo space of the plane and an indication of a poor low light performance of the camera. This might be reduced by further pressing the blacks but it suggests that in low light such as at night the camera will not perform well. This is a minor point for me as I upgraded to the camera in anticipation of making videos in my new open cockpit airplane (coming soon) which will be better lit.

One feature I like but am not sure yet is the best for flying videos is that the stitching software is able to use data recorded by accelerometers in the camera to adjust the angle of the video to keep the horizon level. So when the airplane turns the airplane will appear to roll while the video remains aligned with the ground. This is an effect similar to that one would get with a stabiliser. This is not perfect but it does work as you can see in this video. This feature can be disabled so it is not necessary to use it. In reality of course an observer in the aircraft would move with the aircraft rather than with the ground however I would like to see how the video looks like before deciding whether or not to use this in the future.

Intercom audio was recorded with a separate recorder and adjusted to be omni directional (to emulate a headset worn by an observer in the aircraft). Edit: One day after submitting the video YouTube seems to have introduced a left bias to the Intercom audio (i.e. if one is looking forward the audio appears to come from the left) at least watching the video in Chrome in Safari it still sounds OK. The intercom audio in the original video has equal volume levels on all 4 channels so it should be omnidirectional. It sounded like this immediately after YouTube processed the video so I imagine there was some later audio processing which introduced the bias. I will need to experiment with this. Maybe introducing a forward bias so that at least the audio sounds OK when one is looking forwards. I figured that when one wears a headset the audio will have no bias depending on the direction one looks so omnidirectional would be more sensible. It is a shame YouTube has messed up the audio processing. The underlying ambient audio still seems OK but it has clear biases.

Some videos I found helpful for setup and editing of this video in case you are interested in how to do this:

   • Shoot, Edit, Upload Samsung Gear 360 ...  

   • My workflow: LG 360 CAM files Spatial...  

https://vimeo.com/182434517

The aircraft in the video is a Piper Super Cub (HBPLQ) owned by the Motorfluggruppe Fricktal (MFGF).