{"id":4802,"date":"2017-04-19T00:09:34","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T00:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/facebook-launches-beta-of-spaces-its-goofy-and-fun-social-vr-platform.html"},"modified":"2017-04-19T00:09:34","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T00:09:34","slug":"facebook-launches-beta-of-spaces-its-goofy-and-fun-social-vr-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/facebook-launches-beta-of-spaces-its-goofy-and-fun-social-vr-platform.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook launches beta of Spaces, its goofy and fun social VR platform"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

More than three years after its acquisition of Oculus, Facebook is a product even more deeply intertwined with people\u2019s online identities. Today, Facebook is reaching an important milestone as it launches the first significant integration of social virtual reality into its core product.<\/p>\n

Facebook Spaces<\/a> launches in beta today on Oculus Rift + Touch. The product is a first taste of Facebook\u2019s ambitions to bring social interaction into 3D virtual spaces.<\/p>\n

With Spaces, those who have bought into the Oculus ecosystem can connect their Facebook accounts and dive into an environment where communication isn\u2019t about chat messages, but voice and avatar body language.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the app, up to four friends logged-in to their Facebook accounts can join a \u201cspace\u201d and chat, draw, watch 360 videos, make video calls on Messenger and take VR selfies of their cartoonish avatars (which it can create for you based on recently tagged photos). It\u2019s all pretty basic stuff focused around having fun at the moment; everything feels quite a bit more light-hearted than the cold, bulky Oculus\u00a0hardware you\u2019re using to experience Spaces.\u00a0I had a chance to dive into Spaces for an early demo and it\u2019s clear that Facebook is building this for the masses, even though the masses don\u2019t own a Rift right now. The space is quirky, fun and not taking itself too seriously.<\/p>\n

\n

Oculus wants you to feel the future, Facebook wants you to feel familiar pic.twitter.com\/qzuDIdz2Ww<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Lucas Matney (@Lucas_Matney) April 18, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The most noteworthy highlight of Spaces\u2019 release is that it will be launching on the Oculus Rift but will soon be expanding to other VR platforms. \u201cWe eventually want to be on all the VR platforms,\u201d Facebook\u00a0product manager Mike Booth told me. What\u2019s key about this is that Facebook \u2014 despite owning a popular VR hardware platform \u2014 wants to be a\u00a0Google\u00a0in the\u00a0VR space, not an Apple.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t expect Spaces to be available on the smartphone-based VR systems that you see today. Samsung and Oculus\u2019 Gear VR platform relies on 360 fixed-point movement, which doesn\u2019t lend itself well to expressing yourself in VR. For the Gear VR, Facebook has shown off Facebook 360, an app for viewing 360 photos and videos.<\/p>\n

Spaces represents the first .1 percent of Facebook\u2019s vision for Social VR according to Booth, but it\u2019s clear that the app represents a lot of calculation on Facebook\u2019s part.<\/p>\n

In a recent earnings call, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called virtual reality something that won\u2019t see its full potential realized for another 10 years. Currently, there are between 30-50 Facebook employees working on Social VR, but with augmented reality and virtual reality growing central to Facebook\u2019s core product, these teams are sure to grow massive as more people buy headsets.<\/p>\n

Augmented reality may be the key to Facebook dominating the next decade of mobile, but Facebook is building something incredibly forward-thinking as it rethinks how people\u00a0experience deeply human emotions in virtual reality. Spaces is just a first step, but it\u2019s an important one.<\/p>\n

Spaces is available now \u00a0for free download in the Early Access section of the Oculus Store.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/uQWVcfG-irw\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than three years after its acquisition of Oculus, Facebook is a product even more deeply intertwined with people\u2019s online identities. Today, Facebook is reaching an important milestone as it <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-4802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t