Ever since Facebook purchased Oculus in 2014, Mark Zuckerberg has been speaking to promise of virtual reality as the next communications platform. Yesterday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona he punctuated those thoughts with a big announcement – the creation of an internal team dedicated to Social VR.
Led by Daniel James and Mike Booth, the team will work closely with Oculus as well as other divisions within Facebook to explore and build the future of social interaction in VR, the company says.
Facebook describes their work in VR as “still early” but Oculus has been working to lay the groundwork themselves with experiences like Toybox and an upcoming social SDK that will allow developers to easily implement key multiplayer and networking features into their experiences. In fact, Oculus’ dedication to Social VR is “the reason why [they’re] part of Facebook,” Oculus founder Palmer Luckey told us earlier this year.
Still the idea of a metaverse – a giant interconnected world like the ones in Snow Crash or Ready Player One – is something far off.
“It’s not happening in the immediate future,” Luckey said, “we’d much rather work and get this right over a longer period of time than rush into it at the start and be constrained by the design decisions that we make.” He says that it will take VR reaching a “critical mass” for there to be enough data to know how best to design how the future of social interaction will look.
While it may take a while for VR to reach that critical mass Samsung’s announcement that they plan to bundle a GearVR with every Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge preorder could potentially accelerate the process. Last year Samsung reportedly received over 20 million preorders for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge and while Samsung says the GearVR giveaway is “while supplies last” if they give away even a tenth of that it would significantly accelerate the growth of VR’s user base, which in turn could accelerate the growth and need for social VR.
Full event: https://youtu.be/dz057r6hGj4
Watch Mark Zuckerberg talks at Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2016: VR is the next social platform.
At Samsung’s Unpacked event — where the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge were revealed — Zuckerberg explained about his fascination with VR and how he has been dreaming of using the technology since the age of 11.
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Welcome to the future.
On Sunday, Facebook CEO and virtual reality enthusiast Mark Zuckerberg shared the image above on his Facebook profile.
The photo was taken this past weekend at the Mobile World Congress, a big tech conference in Spain.
It’s looking like 2016 will be the year virtual reality hits the mainstream now that Oculus Rift is on the brink of shipping and Google Cardboard is into the millions of units sold. Now, we finally know when Sony is releasing its new VR headset too. GameStop CEO Paul Raines revealed the PlayStation VR will launch in the third quarter of this year during a live television interview.
“We will launch the Sony product this fall,” said Raines, “and we’re in discussions with the other two players.” Shortly after blurting out the PlayStation VR release date, Raines redirected the conversation to GameStop’s dominance in gaming hardware sales. To watch the flub, jump to the 2:40 mark in the clip below:
Google’s forthcoming wireless virtual reality headset is purportedly in the works. With this new VR headset, users will no longer need a smartphone, PC or gaming console for it to provide a VR experience. (Photo : Justin Sullivan | Getty Images)
Google is reportedly developing a wireless virtual reality headset. The more advanced form of the company’s cardboard viewer will soon not rely on a smartphone, PC or gaming console to make it work – this makes it the first of its kind in the VR field.
The Wall Street Journal, citing its unnamed sources familiar with this matter, says that the company is currently working on an all-in-one VR headset which could likely come out before the year ends.
This time, there is a very serious news about virtual reality as Google Inc. is said to be getting ready to unveil a new-fangled smartphone headset.
According to The Financial Times, the new headset will succeed Cardboard, and would be featuring much better sensors, lenses, and a more solid plastic skin.
It’s said the product is the like of Samsung’s Gear VR since it will use a smartphone to display as well as most of its processing power. The only difference is that the current Cardboard VR headset is just a cardboard headset like its name with an inserted smartphone, while the new one will be coming with an extra motion sensor for adding whatever the phone places out.
Could VR give Hollywood a new boost? Looks like it. Imagine you can be part of the Bond or MI experience instead of sitting an watching it.
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LOS ANGELES and BARCELONA, Spain, Feb. 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Visionary entrepreneur Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs has been selected to represent the rapidly expanding Virtual Reality (VR) industry as the voice of ‘all things’ VR, as a speaker on the highly anticipated ‘Entertainment Showcase’ conference panel of the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the leading industry conference for mobile technology and related industries. The conference panel takes place on the GSMA Mobile World Showcase stage, on Tuesday, February 23, from 1 PM – 2 PM (CET)/12 PM – 1 PM (GMT), in Barcelona, Spain. A cyber-celebrity and global VR visionary, NEVERDIE Jacobs’ participation on the panel will accompany a headlining appearance at the MWC’s companion Gamelab Mobile confab where he will lead the industry-leading group’s discussion on ‘games skills as currency’ in the emerging VR world. The panel joins a slate of appearances with top technology executives which is the most recent stop on a global press tour to promote his campaign to become the first-ever ‘President of Virtual Reality.” (#voteNEVERDIE)
