The Facebook CEO made a surprise visit to Samsung’s Mobile World Congress press conference yesterday in Barcelona “to talk up progress in virtual reality and to promote VR in the future as ‘the most social platform, ‘” Edward C. Baig reports for USA Today.
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The team will also will work closely with Facebook-owned VR headset company Oculus and other teams at Facebook to “build the foundation for tomorrow’s social VR experiences on all platforms”.
While it’s easy to imagine a dsytopian VR-driven future where all of our real-life interactions become usurped by those in a virtual world, the new Social VR team is presumably focused on considering responsible ways to integrate VR on Facebook.
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said Monday he was “sympathetic” with Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook in his stand-off with the United States government over breaking into the iPhone of a mass shooter. While the audience was using Samsung’s Gear VR, he walked into the venue toward the stage, without anyone noticing him. 360 Facebook video allows you to look around and feel like you’re present while watching a video. Rather than streaming an entire 360-degree video in high-resolution, 360 video delivers only the section that the viewer can see in high-res.
While it may seem like working at Facebook is the chillest job, Zuckerberg is constantly coming up with new ideas to keep Facebook current. As a result, videos “look clearer and play faster”, he said. “More than 20,000 have been uploaded, with hundreds more added daily”.
At MWC, Samsung unveiled the Gear 360, a baseball-shaped video camera that captures 360-degree images. The technology is expected to start arriving in a few weeks. His appearance also coincides with a wider Facebook initiative to make VR more social.
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In a blog post, Zuckerberg said: “This team will explore how people can connect and share using today’s VR technology, as well as long-term possibilities as VR evolves into an increasingly important computing platform”. That’s why Facebook is investing in virtual reality, to help deliver this kind of new social experience.
