This Facebook team will work in conjunction with the VR team of Samsung and Oculus in order to explore the future of social interactions in Virtual reality.
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Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Monday tried to extend an olive branch to mobile phone companies, on which the popular social network company increasingly relies, but which are also among his biggest critics.
The announcement was made during Samsung’s press conference ahead of the 2016 Mobile World Congress. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showcased the new Dynamic Streaming feature of the Samsung Gear VR at the press meeting.
While wearing his hat as founder of internet.org, the organization devoted to connecting the whole world’s population to the internet, Zuckerberg said “we’re making sure that we’re serving everyone in the world and not just serving the people that already have internet by getting them faster internet”, he then also stressed the point that the world does indeed need faster internet.
Facebook-owned Oculus VR and Samsung worked together on Samsung’s Gear VR, which priced affordably at $99.99. Or you might think it would serve Facebook’s interests better if the networks spent money hooking up more people rather than connecting fridges and cars to the internet. He used the example of his daughter, born in the autumn of 2015, to explain how VR technology could offer a new means of communication and social sharing.
The team members will work closely with US-based virtual reality technology company Oculus and other teams at Facebook to build the foundation for tomorrow’s social VR experiences on all platforms. It’s a more efficient way of delivering 360 videos, showing only the pixels you’re actually looking at in the highest quality, instead of delivering the entire 360 video in high resolution. 360 Facebook video allows you to look around and feel like you’re present while watching a video.
Facebook’s servers are being brought up to speed to broadcast live, high-quality 360-degree image streams while using the least bandwidth possible. There’s always a more immersive way that you want to share and experience the moments in your life.
“VR is the next platform, where anyone can create and experience anything they want”, Mr Zuckerberg added.
Although the work in VR is still in an early stage and there are a lot of hardware and software challenges that Facebook still needs to solve.
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Fellow technology giants HTC and Sony are also planning to release virtual reality products this year – the Vive and PlayStation VR respectively.
