Watch the first sample footage from GoPro’s six-camera Omni VR rig

GoPro has just published the first sample footage from its newest professional virtual reality camera rig, Omni. The four-minute, 360-degree clip shows skiers and snowboarders carving and jumping around the Austrian Alps.

The footage doesn't look much different from other professional 360-degree productions, probably because most of those companies have been filming with similar (if custom-built) rigs made up of GoPro cameras. There is some stuttering, and the stitching lines are visible, but GoPro includes a disclaimer in the description that the footage was shot with a prototype, and customers should expect "significant improvements to the overall output quality" when Omni is released.

The Omni, when it ships later this year, will help filmmakers eliminate that hassle of needing to build their own rig. (If they want to go all-out, they can buy a 16-camera rig that GoPro built with Google for $15,000.) GoPro started taking preorders for the Omni last month; the company is charging $5,000 for six Hero 4 Black cameras plus all the necessary hardware and software, or $1,500 for just the frame.

GoPro is just about an hour or so away from releasing its first quarter financials, so it's unlikely a coincidence that the company is trying to help promote new product ahead of that. The same thing happened in February when, minutes before releasing the company's disappointing Q4 2015 numbers, GoPro published the first sample footage from its upcoming quadcopter.

• SourceGoPro (YouTube)