Facebook just made VR selfie sticks a thing

During the second day of Facebook's F8 conference, the company showed off the latest prototype demo of its ToyBox virtual reality software. But this one offered a huge twist: VR selfies.

In the middle of his keynote, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer donned an Oculus Rift headset and met another person in VR at a remote location. In the early version of this ToyBox demo, which we saw in October, it was a real-time virtual ping-pong match. But this time, after a bit of chit-chat, Schroepfer traveled with his friend to an immersive, 360-degree environment: London.

       

Once there, the remote user played tour guide, showing the Oculus wearer on stage around a static 360-degree photo of London. It was impressive in that it showed the possibilities inherent in VR tourism. Using such a system, along with the Oculus headsets, a local tour guide could give another person a full tour of a location without anyone ever hopping on a plane.

IMAGE: FACEBOOK

But no tour is complete without a selfie, and that's when Facebook blew our minds. The remote user pulled out a VR selfie stick, which had a virtual mirror on its end, and put his VR head next to the VR head of the Schroepfer, allowing them to take a VR selfie together in London from the comfort of their own remote environments.

And after the VR selfie, Facebook showed how the user could post it to their Facebook page by dropping it into a VR "mailbox" and watching it get beamed into the sky (ending up on your timeline).

IMAGE: FACEBOOK

Sure, the selfie doesn't show their actual faces, but rather odd, polygonal drawings of their respective faces, but the demonstration was astounding nonetheless. And it's likely just a matter of time before they'll manage to get real faces into such an environment — and that's when things will really get interesting. This demo was just a prototype, and it's not available, but still... wow.

In recent weeks, Oculus has stoked anger online due to difficulties with shipping the first-generation Oculus Rift. But today's demo may lead at least a few users to rethink their impatience with the company and take another look. VR selfies are just too cool to resist.

GoPro launching new virtual reality camera, online platform

The race to create both the hardware and the software that will drive the emerging virtual reality market is heating up, and now GoPro has unveiled its latest plans to support VR filmmakers and fans.

At this week's NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) event in Las Vegas, the company will unveil a new VR camera and launch a new VR platform for sharing immersive videos.

First, GoPro will show off its new Omni VR camera, which features six synchronized cameras in what the company calls a spherical array, but the housing itself looks more like a rounded square.

The six Hero4 cameras, plus the aluminum rig, which is lightweight and made for action shots, will be offered for $4,999 and will allow users to capture 8K video.

The GoPro Omni

IMAGE: GOPRO

The company is also introducing GoPro VR, a combination website and free app platform for iOS and Android designed to showcase VR content from around the world as well as facilitate the sharing of that content.

In the run-up to the launch of the VR platform, GoPro released a stunning sample of some of the footage that will be available. The preview footage is fully interactive on YouTube, allowing you to pan around in all directions.

But despite the increasing amount of rich VR content out there, similar VR platforms like Samsung's Milk VR have so far failed to generate much interest beyond the VR enthusiast niche.

However, GoPro's mainstream footprint, and focus on capturing outdoor activities from skateboarding to surfing, could be just the thing to jumpstart a truly robust VR content sharing platform. 

IMAGE: GOPRO

Late last year, GoPro took the wraps off its highest end VR device called the GoPro Odyssey, a 16-camera circular array that sells for $15,000.

The Omni will be available for pre-order beginning Monday via the GoPro website.

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This is how calls and texts look in virtual reality, via the HTC Vive

This past week, Facebook showed us what it's like to take a virtual reality selfie using the Oculus Rift — an experience that has to be seen to truly grasp its awesomeness.

But that demo was just a prototype. You can't take VR selfies with the Oculus just yet. However, you can make phone calls in VR if you have the HTC Vive, and there's video showing how it works.

Delivering a scene we've only witnessed in fictional films like like Lawnmower Man — until now — a member of the crew over at Road to VR recorded a session (video above) in which he sends a text and makes a phone call.

To get VR calling and texting working, in addition to the HTC Vive headset, you'll need an Android smartphone, the Vive Windows Desktop app and Steam and SteamVR installed on a Windows PC.

Remaining connected to the outside world with minimum interruption to your ongoing VR exploits could change the way that many use VR, for everything from gaming to remote working situations (education, medicine, etc.).

Yes, the set-up is elaborate and just unwieldy enough to discourage many users. But that's not the point. People, VR phone calls and texts are real!

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Everything announced on Facebook F8 2016 Conference

Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference is one of the biggest events of the year, especially given how social media is changing our lives in significant ways. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, delivered a keynote speech yesterday which showcased Facebook’s vision of the future. He also listed how Facebook is expanding vigorously in other tech fields as well.

Zuckerberg’s F8 2016 keynote was mostly about Facebook’s future and some customer products. Bots took center stage just like at the Microsoft’s developer conference that was held recently. This was followed by improvements in some customer products, new Facebook features and some new tech coming from the world’s biggest social network.

Lets take a look at what Facebook is bringing for its users down the road.

Messenger Gets a Bot Platform

Facebook is going with bots after many of its competitors did so. Telegram, WeChat, Kik offer it already and Skype just got it. Now its Messenger’s turn to incorporate AI-powered bots for its 900 million users. The company took its sweet time before launching the feature. Even now, it’ll be offered with the newly launched Messenger Beta platform.

The developer platform will let businesses, including news companies, create bots which can interact with Messenger users. Bots can send and receive text, images, buttons, bubbles and calls. Facebook showed off a CNN messenger bot which was capable of reading stories, getting summaries and offered an “Ask CNN” command.

Zuckerberg says the app will learn from your actions and personalise its algorithms to evolve with time.

Facebook Bot Engine

The social network announced the beta launch of Bot Engine, a tool which lets developers teach chatbots what to say in specific situations. Developers can use the Bot Engine along with the Send/Receive API to build Messenger bots. The technology comes from the Messenger’s Wit.AI team.

Facebook Live Stream

Facebook Live is the company’s answer to Meerkat and Periscope. It lets users stream live videos to the social network which, the company hopes, will play a big role in its next growth phase. Live API now supports third-party hardware allowing people to use separate cameras to live stream content. The company has partnered with different manufacturers to build on it and release its own products within the next five years.

Internet Beaming Satellite

During F8 2016, Zuckerberg said that Facebook’s Free Basics program will soon launch its first satellite into orbit in the next few months. According to him, the free internet program is helping more than 25 million people around the world.

Facebook has also announced a Free Basics simulator which lets developers test out how their websites would look like when accessed using Free Basics.

360 Degree VR Camera

The social network just released its Oculus Rift VR headset a few weeks ago. However, it’s not stopping there. Facebook just revealed its new open-source 360-degree camera which can capture some great quality VR content. The camera boasts 17 cameras and can record 8K video at 60 frames per second. The built-in software automatically stitches the videos together.

Being open-source, developers can make their own hardware and software based on the available designs and code.

Instant Articles for Everyone

Facebook announced a couple of months ago that it was bringing Instant Articles to everyone. WordPress will be getting a plugin which will let publishers export their content to the social network. Instant Articles will be added to user feeds directly and increase reader interactions as a result.

Account Kit

The social network announced a new software called the Account Kit. Third-party developers can add it to apps, letting their users to sign in to connect with just their phone number or email address – no passwords needed.

Save To Facebook

Save to Facebook will be a new addition to the social network’s portfolio. It will let users add content to a list of things to view later. The button will be visible on websites, and work like Pinterest, Pocket or Digg.

Share Quotes Easily

Sharing quotable quotes have become quite popular on Facebook. That’s why the company is bringing a new method that will let users clip quotes they like on the web (or e-books) and share them on Facebook in a neat and clean way.

Mark’s View on VR and AR

The founder of Facebook says that virtual reality and augmented reality of the future will be accessible using a gadget not so different from a common pair of glasses. The glasses have been announced as a part of Facebook’s 10 year plan for the future. AR and VR are expected to grow to a $120 billion market by 2020.

Vine for Profile Videos

Facebook is making it much easier for people to replace their profile pictures with profile videos. The ability to upload a 7 second video instead of still pictures has been available since last year. However, users will now be able to upload videos using third-party apps.

Vine and Boomerang will be the first two partners with support for the profile video feature on Facebook.

Facebook and WhatsApp Beat Regular SMS

People use Facebook and WhatsApp to send 60 billion messages every single day, three times more than regular SMS. The figure is a clear indication of the world moving towards online methods of communication rather than the offline ones.

So there you have it folks. Which of these announcements are you excited about? Let us know in the comments below.

Oculus VR Brings a New Reality to the Gaming Industry

After walking the floor of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, many gaming industry participants saw the virtual reality (VR) writing on the wall for the first time — and in a very realistic way. Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) gaming has arrived, or gotten extremely close, with the official ship date for the Oculus Rift VR viewer set for March 28 and current pre-order acceptance now taking place.

Some issues remain in the technology and user experience, not to mention the price point. However, barring a major misstep by the Oculus unit of Facebook, none of these remain permanent obstacles to prevent a long-term VR trend from taking effect in 2016 (according to a January 2016 report from SUPERDATA forecasting an install base of about 38 million VR gaming consumers by the end of the year and a July 2015 Business Insider estimate of VR headset shipments growing at a 99 percent CAGR between 2015 and 2020, reaching $30 billion by that end date).

Game console makers feel the heat from PC VR

While the Oculus Rift VR viewer existed in the purview of developers alone since June 2015, with this January’s announcement, the mainstream gaming public will now have an opportunity to experience VR firsthand. However, most of these potential gamers could remain on the sidelines unless they upgrade from Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox consoles to a fully decked-out PC. That’s unless the console makers get in the PC VR game.

“Nintendo either needs to adapt or be left behind,” Tim Lynch, CEO of Psychsoftpc, tells me. “Microsoft already has its own VR/AR HoloLens in beta now for developers. And since Xbox is essentially a PC-based system, it is better equipped to meet this.”

Actually, Nintendo is playing a wait-and-see game, according to Joanan Hernandez, CEO and founder of Mollejuo, an augmented reality (AR) company with a mobile app called Terra Icons.

“Microsoft is betting heavily on AR with HoloLens,” he says. “Thus, the only direct competition for Oculus is PlayStation VR and HTC Steam VR. There’s space for the three of them — Oculus, HTC, PlayStation — at least initially.”

In fact, HTC does a great job with physical-digital interactions, according to J.P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, a global research and advisory firm. “And it might have some advantages over Oculus in the features department,” he tells me. “For example, by tracking your movement throughout a room using base stations.”

Demand for VR technology looks good for console and mobile gaming platforms.

Expectations for VR exist at a high level. And with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets scheduled to hit retail in Q1 2016 and Sony PlayStation VR in Q2, demand for VR technology looks good for console and mobile gaming platforms. “This is positive for both our video game and tech brand businesses,” Eric Bright, senior director of merchandising at GameStop, tells me. “During our GameStop EXPO September 2015, we saw customers wait in long lines to experience the virtual reality demos Sony and HTC had with positive feedback.”

Price point and immersion

Some industry observers have questioned the $599 price point that Oculus chose for the formal introduction of the Rift, such as Mike Goodman, director of digital media strategies at Strategy Analytics, a consumer-focused business consulting firm.

“Oculus views the Rift as a ‘premium’ product and has priced it accordingly; however, there is ‘premium pricing’ and then there is pricing yourself out of the market,” Goodman tells me. “While there is a small segment of PC gamers who think nothing of dropping $2,300 on a high-end PC, $600 for the Oculus Rift plus an additional $1,500 for a PC capable of running Oculus VR games and entertainment is just too much for most of us. Considering Facebook spent roughly $2 billion to acquire Oculus VR, they might want to rethink their premium price point.”

Rather than price, immersion will be the key factor in VR’s success.

— Olli Sinerma

However, others have seen that earlier breakthrough consumer electronics with elevated acquisition costs have gone on to perform well in the marketplace. It comes down to the value proposition of immersion VR versus price point.

“The future of VR will not be determined by its current cost,” Olli Sinerma, co-founder and project lead at Mindfield Games, developer of the forthcoming VR gameP.O.L.L.L.E.N, tells me. “What Oculus can ship, it will sell, and others will develop cheaper alternatives like the already available Google Cardboard. Rather than price, immersion will be the key factor in VR’s success.”

Install base barrier

But immersion alone may not ensure that Oculus will surmount its seemingly lofty sales tag. Other barriers beside the console makers represent plausible pitfalls for Facebook’s VR gear maker. The install base of VR-capable PCs presents the largest hedgerow for Oculus to jump over.

“Oculus’s $599 price point was higher than many expected, but that’s not the core inhibitor for adoption — it’s having a PC that’s Oculus-ready,” says Gownder. “Aside from PC gamers — and not even all of them — very few people have PCs with the needed specifications. Most people would have to buy the Rift and a $1,000-plus PC to use the device.”

Concurring with that perspective, Goodman opines that the vast majority don’t have PCs that meet Oculus Rift’s minimum PC requirements to run VR games and entertainment. Overall, Gownder estimates that only 13 million PCs globally are currently compatible with the Oculus Rift.

Which comes first, VR hardware or software?

Seeing that the install base for VR-capable PCs remains at a low level, the market might not yet exist. The classic chicken-or-the-egg scenario pops into view. Without a critical mass of hardware to run VR software, who will write the games? And with a lack of first-person shooters, etc., who will build PCs and consoles with VR compatibility?

“When it comes to consumer entertainment, the content dilemma poses a significant hurdle for adoption,” Maurice Patel, industry strategist, media and entertainment at Autodesk, developer of 3D design software, tells me. “Many VR headset manufacturers try to kick-start content creation by funding their own productions through initiatives like Oculus Studio. However, it will take several iterations of hardware and successful production projects before the technology is mature enough to warrant generalized, large-scale production of VR content.”

Today, VR is an exciting, bleeding-edge technology for exploring new ways of telling stories, driving gameplay and communicating ideas. Where it will go from here is yours to dream.

Virtual Reality Meets Education

Since the 1950s, virtual reality (VR) has been hovering on the periphery of technology without achieving accepted mainstream application or commercial adoption. Since 2012, VR startups have raised more than $1.46 billion in venture capital, including more than $100 million in funding during the last four consecutive quarters.

According to Citi analyst Kota Ezawa, 2016 is the year that VR will take off in earnest, with the VR market expected to grow to a $15.9 billion industry by 2019. Citi also anticipates the market for hardware, networks, software and content will reach $200 billion by 2020.

The content share of this market is of particular interest, as this segment of the tech industry has historically been dedicated to gaming — but the world is changing. We are shifting from the now relatively benign universe in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to Ernest Cline’s VR paradigm as described in Ready Player One. Like Huxley, Cline has written of a dystopian environment wherein technology has overtaken humanity.

For our purpose, let’s consider VR as a useful tool, and perhaps even a productive enhancement to human interaction, bringing together people from around the world to engage and interact — regardless of social, economic or geographic disparities. In the abstract as well as the applied, modern education is poised to take advantage of this latest tech innovation.

Over the last several years, VR has moved from being the purview of the military and aviation to the mainstream of professional development, as managers, instructors, coaches and therapists have claimed increasing benefit from immersive experiences.

While statistics on VR use in K-­12 schools and colleges have yet to be gathered, the steady growth of the market is reflected in the surge of companies (including zSpace,Alchemy VR and Immersive VR Education) solely dedicated to providing schools with packaged educational curriculum and content, teacher training and technological tools to support VR­-based instruction in the classroom. Myriad articles, studies and conference presentations attest to the great success of 3D immersion and VR technology in hundreds of classrooms in educationally progressive schools and learning labs in the U.S. and Europe.

Perhaps the most utopian application of this technology will be seen in terms of bridging cultures and fostering understanding among young students.

Much of this early foray into VR­-based learning has centered on the hard sciences — biology, anatomy, geology and astronomy — as the curricular focus and learning opportunities are notably enriched through interaction with dimensional objects, animals and environments. The World of Comenius project, a biology lesson at a school in the Czech Republic that employed a Leap Motion controller and specially ­adapted Oculus Rift DK2 headsets, stands as an exemplary model of innovative scientific learning.

In other areas of education, many classes have used VR tools to collaboratively construct architectural models, recreations of historic or natural sites and other spatial renderings. Instructors also have used VR technology to engage students in topics related to literature, history and economics by offering a deeply immersive sense of place and time, whether historic or evolving.

In what may turn out to be an immersive education game changer, Google launched itsPioneer Expeditions in September 2015. Under this program, thousands of schools around the world are getting — for one day — a kit containing everything a teacher needs to take their class on a virtual trip: Asus smartphones, a tablet for the teacher to direct the tour, a router that allows Expeditions to run without an Internet connection, a library of 100+ virtual trips (from the Great Wall of China to Mars) and Google Cardboard viewers or Mattel View­Masters that turn smartphones into VR headsets.

This global distribution of VR content and access will undoubtedly influence a pedagogical shift as these new technologies allow a literature teacher in Chicago to “take” her students to Verona to look at the setting for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, or a teacher in the Bronx to “bring” her Ancient Civilizations class to the ancient Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza.

And with VR platforms like AltspaceVR and LectureVR (an initiative of Immersive VR Education), entirely new possibilities are available for teachers of all kinds, as the technology of making avatars and supporting “multi-player” sessions allows for an exponentially­ scaled level of socialization and outreach.

Potentially, a collaboration between these innovative VR platform offerings could result in a curator or artist guiding a group of thousands around a museum exhibition or cultural site, or an actor or professor leading a virtual master class in real time with students from all over the world.

Perhaps the most utopian application of this technology will be seen in terms of bridging cultures and fostering understanding among young students, as it will soon be possible for a third-grade class in the U.S. to participate in a virtual trip with a third-grade class in India or Mexico.

Access to some type of mobile VR device is affordable for many more individual users and, in turn, many more schools.

Despite the fact that VR is still developing, real progress has been seen in the economic scaling of the technology. The cost to the consumer of VR hardware (headsets, in particular) has steadily declined, as noted in the head­-mounted displays (HMDs) commercially available today: Google Cardboard for $20 and Samsung Gear VRfor $99 (at this writing, Oculus Rift, a desktop VR device, is available for pre­-order for $599).

The fact that The New York Times recently supplied more than one million subscribers with Google Cardboard headsets to access its newly launched VR experiences has further advanced accessibility and mainstreaming of the device, as well as this innovative means of media consumption.

Overall, access to some type of mobile VR device is affordable for many more individual users and, in turn, many more schools. Some forward-thinking instructors are even using 3D printers to print their own customized HMDs with their technology students, a solution that dovetails with the popular maker­-trend philosophy.

So maybe we are ready for the futuristic world of Cline’s Ready Player One. But perhaps the utopian rather than dystopian construct is not only more appealing, but also more relevant in this global community.

Educators and students alike are seeking an ever-expanding immersive landscape, where students engage with teachers and each other in transformative experiences through a wide spectrum of interactive resources. In this educational reality, VR has a definitive place of value.

Oculus Pushes Back Touch Controller Launch To Second Half Of 2016

Sometimes timing creeps up on you and you have to move things back. It’s an ugly reality for hardware creators, but it happens.

Today, Oculus announced that its Touch controllers will be shipping in the second half of 2016 instead of immediately with the Rift, which is still coming in Q1 2016 with preorders coming “soon.”

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey tweeted a link to a blog post from the company, positioning things around the importance of “getting it right” rather than merely getting it out there:

As we wrote in June, the Touch controller, known as the “Half Moon” prototype, will let you pick up objects, fire a gun, or point at things while in a virtual reality experience with the Rift.

Here’s the full post:

On the path to perfecting Touch, we’ve decided that we need more time before release, and we’ll now be shipping Touch in the second half of 2016. Pre-orders will open a few months prior to launch.

Rift remains on schedule to ship in Q1 with pre-orders launching very soon.

On Touch hardware, we’ve made significant advances in ergonomics, and we’re implementing many changes that make Touch even more comfortable, reliable, and natural. We’re also implementing changes that improve hand pose recognition.

We’re also outputting larger numbers of pre-production runs, which means we can get a lot more Touch hardware in the hands of developers who need it.

There will be a huge amount of ground-breaking new content launching alongside Touch. We shared a handful of early previews at Oculus Connect 2 in September, but we can’t wait to show you what’s coming next.

The feedback on Touch has been incredibly positive, and we know this new timeline will produce an even better product, one that will set the bar for VR input. We appreciate your patience and promise Touch will be worth the wait.

Pre-orders will open a few months before the Touch controllers are slated to ship.