Virtual reality ‘the next platform’ says facebook’s mark zuckerberg

In fact, Zuckerberg appeared on stage during the MWC event just after audience members took off the Gear VR headsets they had donned to experience virtual reality during Samsung’s presentation.

“By doing this, we’ve quadrupled the resolution quality of 360 streaming video in VR by reducing the amount of required network bandwidth by four times so videos look clearer and play faster”, Facebook said. Since Gear VR launched in November 2015, the response has been incredibly strong: More than 200 games and apps are now available for the platform in the Oculus store, and people have already watched more than a million hours of video in Gear VR. Booth, who actively shows great interest in VR on his account, also tweeted this morning “VR is wonderful, but even more so when your friends are in there with you” along with a link to an article about Zuckerberg discussing VR.

Bob O’Donnell, an analyst at Technalysis Research, said he had serious doubts about the prospects for VR despite Zuckerberg’s strong emotional appeal.

To help with recording VR, Samsung announced the Gear 360, which works with the Gear VR headset.

Mr Zuckerberg also explained that while his parents logged him taking his first steps as a child by writing it in a baby book, and his siblings have used photos and video, he wants to capture his daughter’s using 360 video, which can then be viewed in virtual reality. Among their assignments will be to explore how people can connect and share using current VR tech, as well project long-term possibilities for the genre.

“VR is the next platform, where anyone can create and experience anything they want”, Mr Zuckerberg added.

To help push the technology forward, Facebook recently formed a number of engineering teams to create new social VR applications, he said.

“Pretty soon we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the power to share and experience whole scenes as if you’re just there, right there in person”, Zuckerberg says. And now we’re entering into a world where that’s video.

Below the sphere sits a handle, making it easy to tote the Gear 360 around and film your world without hands getting in the way. Looks like this time around virtual reality will stick and actually become a mass market product. Scientists have been experimenting with VR for years, but it’s only been in the last couple of years that computing and telecommunications has gotten to the stage where it’s possible to do in good quality on reasonable hardware and networks.