Facebook chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer just showed how to take a selfie of yourself and a friend inside a virtual reality 360-degree photo.
He showed off the demo during a keynote at the F8 event in San Francisco today. It’s part of Facebook’s plan to make VR, which can be a solitary experience, more social. This helps explain more about why Facebook paid $2 billion to buy Oculus VR, maker of the Oculus Rift VR headset, in 2014.
In the demo, Schroepfer donned a VR headset and showed how he could communicate with a friend using the Toy Box avatars, which show an artistic representation of your friend’s face and hands in VR. They visited 360-degree photos together, and then produced a smartphone and a selfie stick. They used it to take a selfie of their avatars visiting a faraway place. That was a pretty cool demo, and it is a way to make VR more appealing to a larger number of people.
Yesterday, the company showed Facebook Surround 360 camera for capturing VR videos of the world without a lot of costly post processing. Sadly, Facebook hasn’t said how many Oculus Rift units it has shipped yet. It has only said that it had a great launch, but has had some “component shortages” that are resulting in delivery delays.
“This addresses a key thing limiting the explosion in 3D content,” Schroepfer said.
After he showed the demo of taking a selfie, Schroepfer said, “How’s that for social presence?” And he got a big cheer.
Here’s an image of touring a VR photo together.
VR demo at #F8, one person remotely interacting with another, video pic.twitter.com/VzXkd3bRI9
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) April 13, 2016
And here’s an image of taking a virtual reality selfie with a friend.
Selfies even happen in VR #F8 pic.twitter.com/wsVITJ1MlU
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) April 13, 2016
And here’s a video of the demo.
https://www.facebook.com/carolyn.everson/videos/vb.726955912/10153468781165913/?type=2&theater