Remember the days where at the end of academic years your colleagues would thrust a slam book upon you to fill. It would be a thing of nostalgia when they would revisit your memories through the book. Do you know why slam books are almost nowhere to be seen nowadays? That is because of the power of Facebook which has effectively eliminated the gap that was there between colleagues and friends. Moving forward Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook has envisioned that about a billion of Facebook users would be connected to VR in the coming future.
The VR get together
It is simply not possible to relive the valedictory function of an academic year for the simple reason that no one knows where he would be taken in his life and career. At alumni meets and get togethers if more than half of colleagues manage to attend then it is a huge success indeed. What if I tell you that whole batch of your colleagues can interact with you without even leaving their respective homes? Does it seem a little far-fetched? Absolutely not. Here’s how.
Facebook has incepted their
VR service called the Spaces where users can meet around, have a gala and make a blast in the virtual world. Through this platform users can chat around with their friends in a 3D virtual environment. Facebook has bought oculus for the same purpose. It knows that VR industry is poised to take over the movie industry and hence is leaving no stone unturned in leveraging that opportunity.
The head of social VR Rachel Franklin says that VR is a technology like no other that induces a magical presence. It kind of gives us a sense of being glued to on another even when we are apart.
Get ready to be cartooned
Facebook Spaces lets you create a cartoon avatar through which you can represent yourself in virtual world. Multiple people can be brought into the virtual space at the same time and they can chat as usual. The chat is not like as in lifeless chat through browsers. This VR chat would be very lively where you get to move your hands and so on. All this is of course possible with the Oculus Touch controllers.
This VR world will also mine from your Facebook profile where you get to overlay 360 images or videos Facebook feed into the virtual arena. This will obviously immerse you and your friends into the personalized environment. One can also flick through 2D photos with them.
If you don’t have an oculus Rift then it’s definitely not the end of the virtual world as friends can be added to the conversation through video chat on Facebook messenger. You can also paint around in the virtual arena however the main focus of the app is to provide good chat and hang out feature.
One great upside when communicating through VR than through the traditional video calls is that the communication is enriched because of facial expressions and gestures.
Sloppy
Without consumer headsets the characters get portrayed is not upto the mark. The faces look very wooden and people find it unsettling. In addition to VR, Facebook is also trying to make its mark in AR. They want to develop a contact glass the looks and feels normal but which can overlay various kinds of digital information on top of real world.
Conclusion
The success of Internet giants like Facebook and Google is that they are ever involved in continual research. One just needs to see Facebook timeline which gets tweaked every now and then and it is only getting better. When they bought Oculus VR company for $2 billion when the entire VR industry was itself was valued at $3 billion well informed technocrats knew what Facebook was doing. A hardware revolution is imminent in the VR space which will reduce the prices of the VR devices which is the main hindrance for the widespread use of VR. The Facebook software platform Spaces is already thriving and will only keep attracting more people into VR. One thing is certain that whatever progress the VR industry receives Facebook will receive a gargantuan portion of that. There’s more to come in the VR industry and one should very well be prepared for that as we are.
