A week back, Mark Zuckerberg and his team demoed the Social VR software at the Oculus Connect 3. The demo showed how Mark, using an Oculus headset, interacting with people remotely in virtual reality. The interaction included playing games, chatting and even answering a video call in the virtual world. What was interesting was the use of avatars in VR in order to make the interaction a little bit more fun.
Avatars in VR isn’t anything new, but what was impressive was that how the devices used for VR can actually sense facial expressions which are then translated into how the avatars communicate. Raise your eyebrow in real life and your avatar in VR will also do the same. I am still amazed that the Oculus headset is able to capture that.
Another interesting feature I saw was the ability to create objects in VR and then play with it. In the demo, Mark started playing with a sword and since his teammate didn’t have a sword, he drew one using a pen-like tool, and started using the drawing as an object in 3D.
I am totally blown away by what VR can do. The future of virtual communication seems to point towards virtual reality and augmented reality. It seems that the purchase of Oculus a couple of years back by Facebook for almost $2billion seems to be paying off.
The cherry at the top would be the ending in which Mark’s wife, Priscilla, made a video call to Mark and he answered it in VR.
Check out the video of Mark Zuckerberg demoing the Oculus Social VR Demo at Oculus Connect 3.
