Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at Oculus Connect 3 to offer a glimpse into the VR future Facebook and Oculus envision, and it looks exciting.
Facebook owns Oculus and the two companies have ambitious plans for the virtual reality scene. While there's still a long road ahead before turning it into reality, Zuckerberg demonstrated a standalone VR headset that would work its magic without requiring a phone or a PC.
Positional tracking stands at the core of this impressive new prototype. In the brief demo video, the VR headset Zuckerberg used seemed to be a modified version of the Oculus Rift, fitted with a compute module mounted into the back of the headset.
Thanks to this positional tracking technology, the VR headset can determine its location in physical space and adjust the content it displays based. For instance, 360-degree videos limit the user to a spherical view from a fixed viewpoint, but a VR headset with positional tracking would allow the user to walk and see the setting from every angle, experiencing the story at another level.
On stage at Oculus Connect 3, Zuckerberg put on the customized Rift helmet and shared with the audience virtual avatars of his co-workers, Michael and Lucy. To further demonstrate the "social VR" technology, or augmented social VR technology, the trio left the stage and dove to the bottom of the ocean — virtually, of course. When the ocean got boring, they moved to Mars; just three virtual avatars chilling on the Red Planet.
The trio continued their virtual trip to Zuckerberg's office at Facebook headquarters, demonstrating other potential applications such as playing chess or cards. Lastly, they left the office and headed to a VR model of Zuckerberg's home.
Zuckerberg then called his wife, Priscilla Chan, to demonstrate how video calls work from within the VR. The couple and their dog Beast then took a family selfie (see image above) straight from within VR, and Zuckerberg easily shared it to his Facebook page.
"I took this family selfie while doing a live demo in front of 100,000 people. That's me in VR, Priscilla video called in with Messenger, and Beast was just hanging out with his ball in front of a camera at our home," Zuckerberg explains. "We were all in there together!"
Judging by this intriguing demo, Facebook's VR future seems to have great potential and a VR headset that would not require a phone or a PC to work would definitely boost its appeal. The standalone headset is just a prototype at this point, however, and Zuckerberg made no mention of when it might become available to the general public.
