The visual system of the flying insects is the source of inspiration for the presented hardware vision system. The faceted eyes of a common fly provide it with omnidirectional vision, egomotion and depth estimation. Utilizing the concept of faceted eyes, an omnidirectional camera is realized by layering CMOS image sensors over the surface of a hemispherical structure. This system is referred to as the Panoptic camera and it has two distinguished features. First, it is an omnidirectional camera capable of recording light information from any direction around its center. Second, it is a polydioptric system where each CMOS facet consists of a CMOS camera with a distinct focal plane; hence the full system is a multiple aperture camera.