Oculus Connect 3 day one is in full swing, but everyone’s really looking forward to tomorrow. That’s when the VR specialist hosts its anticipated keynote speech. We’re not sure exactly what Oculus will talk about during the show, but we do know one famous face will be there.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of social networking giant and Oculus parent company Facebook, today confirmed that he’ll be at the keynote to “demo something new” that the team has been building for VR. His below Facebook message was accompanied by an image of both himself and Product Manager of Social VR, Michael Booth wearing Oculus Rifts and using the company’s upcoming position tracked controllers, Oculus Touch. Is Facebook about to go big with its first social VR app?
You can trace the clues of what the company might be revealing tomorrow back to earlier this year at its own F8 developer conference. During an on-stage presentation the VR team teased a multi-user experience in which people travel led between different 360 degree photos. The demo also used Oculus Touch controllers, and users’ avatars appeared to be practically identical to those seen in the Oculus Toybox demo from last year.
Friends could warp between pictures by producing orbs and bringing them to their heads. They could also take their own pictures from inside the environment and then post them to Facebook itself through a virtual mailbox of sorts. It’s clear Facebook has big plans for this sort of application of VR – why else would a social networking site spend $2 billion on a headset? – and it sounds like Oculus Connect 3 could be where we next get a good look at like.
Last week we asked five questions we expected to be answered at the event and, sure enough, social VR was among them. It remains to be seen if we’ll still get more insight on other topics like inside out tracking.
Connect’s keynote speech gets underway at 10:00 am tomorrow. We’ll be bringing you all of the latest updates from it.
