Get Ready To Browse Facebook Using VR
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook plays an enormous role in the digital lives of people across the globe. Whether it’s keeping up with family and friends, reading news or watching videos, the impact and reach of Facebook can’t be overstated.
It’s this exact presence that made many VR enthusiasts hesitant when Facebook purchased Oculus Rift. There was a fear that existed that Facebook would democratize the virtual reality experience to such an extent that there’d be a danger your VR world would look no different than your Facebook feed; filled with sponsored ads and (now life-sized) pictures of your weird uncle you’d much sooner forget than interact with.
Now, Oculus has said that soon its users will be able to access their Facebook account and feed from inside Oculus’s Home interface. This is the second move that Facebook has made to push their platform into VR, and why not? Facebook is ubiquitous in the real world, why shouldn’t you be able to browse Facebook in a virtual one?
The truth is, Facebook is one of VR’s big investors and it makes sense that it would leverage Oculus through its social network. And it’s not only smart from a business perspective, but smart from how it may change VR.
Up to this point one of VR’s limits has been the lack of interactivity with other users. It’s something that a social network you might imagine would want to play with and is what makes the crazy Facebook VR app ‘Spaces’ work so well. And while what Facebook has managed to do is exactly what many people were in fact afraid of, they have managed to do it in a way that looks, well, pretty cool.
With nothing more than an Oculus Rift controller and a Facebook account, you can log in and within Spaces, hang with any of your friends who also have Rift. You can interact with any 360 photos you may have posted to your feed, throw a dinner party, or see what your buddies are up to.
If this all sounds pretty revolutionary, it is. Now, it’s maybe not going to blow your socks off with respect to its graphics, if anything it’s the VR equivalent of a Nintendo Wii. But what worked with the Wii wasn’t the graphics, it was the combination of a new style of gameplay that was so easy that anyone, hardcore gamer or someone who’d never played a console game before, could join the fun instantly. And this smartly is what Spaces is trying to get at. Whereas now for people to enjoy VR with their friends they may, for instance, need to all hit up a virtual reality arcade, with Spaces, Zuckerberg and Co. have figured out that all people really need is Facebook (and well, I guess a Rift) to interact with your friends within VR. And that its design is so cartoony in Wii-like fashion, it’s hard not to guess that soon anyone and their weird uncles will be wanting to give it a shot.
As we know, they already have a Facebook account, so they’ll just need an Oculus Rift.
Wait, what’s that?
Facebook just dropped the price of Oculus Rift?
Looks like you’ll be hanging with Crazy Uncle Otis (or at least his virtual facsimile) sooner than you thought.