Today at Oculus Connect, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave a live demo of a social application that allows you to interact with other people live in virtual reality. It’s a software platform that “puts people first.” You can make eye contact with other avatars, and things like facial expressions are handled via software.
Zuckerberg also showed off the ability to teleport the people involved in the virtual chat to other locations, such as underwater with sharks or even to the surface of Mars. Users can also bring up a menu of locations and teleport to different places, and Zuckerberg traveled to his office at Facebook through VR.
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It’s an impressive demonstration of technology using the existing Oculus Rift and Touch technology, and the software even has the ability to host things like virtual card games or chess. You can also draw objects in space and then pick them up to make things like virtual swords.
Users can also watch video together in VR, and a player can hold the screen and zoom the screen up and down to create a private movie theater in the virtual space. The software lets users take Facebook Messenger calls and interact with other people using virtual screens to project things like video calls.
This is a fascinating look at how the future of virtual reality is social, and the idea of visiting places in VR can be broadened and made a bit more “real.”
