Insta360's US arm has launched the Insta360 Spatial Capture Challenge, which asks X5 and X6 owners to submit Gaussian splat scenes made with Spatial Capture.
Insta360 introduced Spatial Capture alongside the X6 in August. The feature sends 360 footage from the Insta360 app to cloud servers, where it is reconstructed as a 3D Gaussian splat, and none of the reconstruction happens on the camera. Insta360 lists support for the X6, X5 and X4 Air in select modes, with a limit of four uses per account each month.
The Spatial Capture Challenge carries $3,500 in prizes. A single $2,000 Grand Prize goes to the most liked entry on the challenge voting page, and three Creative Awards pay $500 each. A monthly winner receives an X6 Essentials Bundle with Insta360 merchandise, and weekly winners receive merchandise.
Entrants generate a share link for a finished scene in the Insta360 app and submit it through the entry form. Posting the scene on Instagram with the @insta360_usa tag and #Insta360SpatialCapture earns a bonus entry. The campaign is framed around showing the USA in 3D, through places, journeys and rides.
The campaign page and entry form do not link to official rules, eligibility requirements, judging criteria for the Creative Awards, or the voting page. The form only asks entrants to affirm that their entry is original work, that they have permission for anything shown in it, and that Insta360 may use it to promote the challenge.
The campaign page showcases five example scenes in Insta360's web viewer, two from Hugh Hou and one each from David Zhou, Eat Sleep 360 and Just Another Chris. Radiance Fields' Michael Rubloff also published a video review of X6 Spatial Capture. The video covers capture technique with a selfie stick, shutter speed, white balance and bitrate settings, why 8K30 is sufficient, capture length and elevation, and training the same footage locally in Spirula Studio on NVIDIA, Mac, AMD or Intel hardware.
From my own experience, I have found that 360 cameras like the X5 and X6 are the best dollar for dollar option for creating splats. You are able to capture the world around you so much faster than you can with a traditional 2D camera. Additionally, now that you can also send your footage to the cloud for processing, I can upload while I'm still walking around and exploring.
If anyone is interested in taking a look at results from Spatial Capture, here is my personal favorite that I have taken so far, and many others I have captured below!
This article is part of a partnership between Radiance Fields and Insta360. Submissions are open now through December 20.
