Facebook adds new Social VR team, dynamic streaming for mobile and more

To counter complaints that he had sold out, Luckey told me that Oculus would stay an independent company within Facebook.

“By doing this, we’ve quadrupled the resolution quality of 360 streaming video in VR by reducing the amount of required network bandwidth by 4x – so videos look clearer and play faster”, the blog noted. To prove a point Samsung continued to unveil a brand new consumer-level 360-degree camera dubbed the Gear 360. “They’ll work closely with Oculus and other teams at Facebook to build the foundation for tomorrow’s social VR experiences on all platforms”. 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. The ultimate one: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg strode out on stage to explain how putting on a VR headset can actually be social.

The two companies started working together previous year, and in November Samsung launched the $99 Gear VR headset.

At the same time as announcing the social VR team, Facebook said that users had uploaded 20,000 videos in VR-friendly 360-degree format, after it added the feature to its website and apps late previous year. So that way, even if my parents and my family aren’t there to experience it in person, they can feel like they’re right there with us.

According to Zuckerberg, “VR is the next platform, where anyone can create and experience anything they want”. “More needs to happen, but we have seen great progress from a year ago already”, she said. “And then it was photos”.

“We’ve only just started to explore what’s possible with video and VR”, he said.

“At Facebook we think about giving people richer tools”, he said.

Samsung’s $100 Gear VR viewing headset is also powered by Oculus’s technology, which Facebook acquired in 2014 when it paid $2.3 billion to buy Oculus VR. The problem with VR right now is there’s not a ton of content. The tools to capture content for VR headsets are really expensive and bulky right now.

Bob O’Donnell, an analyst at Technalysis Research, said he had serious doubts about the prospects for VR despite Zuckerberg’s strong emotional appeal. “That’s because it combines the best hardware, from Samsung, with the best software – from Facebook, with Oculus”.