You'll Soon Be Able To Make Virtual Reality Video Calls On Facebook
It was only a matter of time.
You're immersed in a virtual environment — and sporting the appropriate headgear, of course — when someone tries to get in touch with you back in the real world. What do you do? It's a #firstworldproblem hardly anyone has actually experienced yet, despite affordable VR headsets starting to hit the market; however Facebook has a solution.
The social media giant does own Oculus, after all, so it was only a matter of time before they found a way to integrate one with the other. At the Oculus Connect 3 conference this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donned a pair of tech-savvy goggles, entered an augmented reality realm and took a Facebook Messenger video call from his wife, Priscilla Chan. The chat popped up on a device worn on his avatar's wrist, then opened in a window in his field of vision, meaning that he could both talk and keep going about his virtual business.
Zuckerberg also unveiled a few more VR bits and pieces, including the ability to take a virtual selfie and share it on Facebook (hey, we already said this kind of thing was only a matter of time). Then there's what's being called "VR emoji", which are exactly what they sound like — if you gesture in an angry or happy way, your avatar's face will change to display your emotional state. Plus, you can also take 360-degree photos of actual, real-world scenes and overlay them with VR avatars of friends who are elsewhere so that you can all hang out, play cards or board games, have a sword fight or watch TV.
We mightn't all be donning headsets right this moment, but developments like this show that virtual reality isn't going anywhere. In fact, with Sony's Playstation VR released this month, the field is really just beginning to roll out, so expect plenty more news where this came from.
Via Tech Crunch. Image: Oculus.
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