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Oculus is rolling out its expanded social VR features
Along with Quest hand tracking, one of Facebook's big announcements at Oculus Connect 6 in September was a batch of social VR features. You'll get to try them over the coming days, as Oculus is starting to roll them out.
A virtual cave got me excited about the future of social VR
Inside the Future Reality Lab at New York University, there is a cart with 50 headsets on it. It sits by a 10-by-10-foot square that's sometimes used as a motion-capture stage for the lab's offshoot startup Parallux and its ambitious projects in VR and XR (cross reality). The team's latest effort is Cave, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival's Immersive Arcade, and uses what Parallux is calling "a new shared XR technology."
Watch the Oculus Connect 5 keynote at 1PM ET
What's arguably the biggest VR event of the year, Oculus Connect 5, is about to kick off -- and to no one's surprise, Oculus is encouraging you to tune in. It's streaming the OC5 keynote, and you can watch the regular stream live below or on Facebook starting at 1PM Eastern. On top of that, you can watch in VR this year -- if you have an Oculus Go or Gear VR, you can spectate with fellow headset wearers using Oculus Venues.
AltspaceVR co-founder joins Facebook's social VR team
Facebook announced today that Eric Romo, the former CEO and co-founder of AltSpaceVR, is joining its social VR team as Product Director. He'll be helping with Facebook's nascent but thriving social VR efforts, building upon the company's Facebook Spaces launch last year.
Facebook's Hugo Barra says standalone headsets are key to social VR
Even though Oculus didn't have an official presence at CES this year, its leader, Hugo Barra, made a surprise appearance at Qualcomm's press conference to make an important announcement: Xiaomi would be its global hardware partner for Oculus Go, its first standalone VR headset. What's more, Xiaomi would also be making a special variant of the Go, the Mi VR Standalone, especially for China. In an interview with Barra following the press conference, he explained the reason for the push in standalone headsets: social VR.
Facebook brings its social VR 'Spaces' to the HTC Vive
Earlier this year, Facebook unveiled Spaces, its inaugural attempt at bringing the social network to VR. And, seeing as Facebook also owns Oculus, it's no surprise that Spaces was a Rift-exclusive at launch. But, just as Facebook is on every platform and device imaginable, the plan for Spaces was always to have it spread far and wide as well. That's why starting today, Facebook is making Spaces available for the HTC Vive, marking the first time the app is going cross-platform.
'Bait!' brings an ice fishing expedition to Facebook's social VR
Facebook launched its social VR Spaces beta last April, finally showing us a compelling experience that helped put the social media company's acquisition of Oculus in the first place. Recently, Oculus showed off a little ice fishing game from casual game studio Resolution Games at the Oculus Connect 4 conference. Now, the game -- dubbed Bait! Arctic Open -- is ready to take you and a friend into Spaces VR together.
Facebook is working on VR 'Venues' for live concerts
Mark Zuckerberg wants virtual reality to be less isolating, so Facebook is working on "Venues." Think of them like VR social spaces where you can meet up with friends to watch concerts like the ones Live Nation is pumping out. Venues make a lot of sense when you consider Facebook's push for live video, sports and putting things like VR streams and 360-degree photos and video into the News Feed. Zuckerberg said that Venues will also play host to movie and TV premieres as well.
Watch the Oculus Connect keynote right here at 1PM ET!
Guess what today is? If you said "Oculus Connect 4 keynote day" you were right. You also probably knew what day it was before reading this post. But I digress. Assuming you aren't in San Jose for the event, you'll need a place to watch it come 1 PM Eastern. Well, that's what the embed window below is for. And, if you have a Rift or Gear VR, you can watch the keynote address that way too. Speaking of, maybe expect a new Rift headset to be announced, and perhaps an update on the wireless one teased last year. Oh, and an awkward social VR demo is all but guaranteed. Catch y'all in the asynchronous-spacewarped metaverse.
Microsoft buys AltspaceVR's struggling virtual hangout
When AltspaceVR announced that it was staying open after threatening to close its doors, it said it was "deep in discussions" with people who were passionate about it. Apparently one of those people was Microsoft, because the software giant has just announced that it's acquiring AltspaceVR, officially providing Windows Mixed Reality with a social VR solution. "With the AltspaceVR team onboard we look forward to building the world's preeminent mixed reality community," said Alex Kipman, Microsoft's Mixed Reality head, in a statement. If you're not familiar with AltspaceVR, it's sort of like a Second Life for VR. Even though AltspaceVR has only been around for a few years, it already has competition in the social VR space. Its biggest rival is arguably Facebook Spaces, which is the social network's attempt at a virtual hangout space. Of course, Spaces' big benefit is that it makes use of your existing Facebook network. But AltspaceVR has had successes too. It partnered with NBC to broadcast last year's presidential debates in VR and it's even hosted virtual comedy shows from Reggie Watts and Paul Scheer. AltspaceVR is accessible with Google Daydream, Samsung's Gear VR, the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. With the Microsoft acquisition, it's likely that AltspaceVR will be available on Windows Mixed Reality headsets as well.
Fox Sports brings its 'virtual suite' to Gold Cup VR broadcasts
Fox Sports is no stranger to VR. The network broadcasted Super Bowl 51 via a virtual suite of sorts, for instance. Now Fox is taking that further with the CONCACAF Gold Cup soccer championship. The footie action starts July 8th with the USA vs. Panama match at 4:30 PM Eastern, and will continue with two as-of-yet unannounced games thereafter. Basically, it's combining that social space from American football with its previous work of broadcasting what everyone else around the world calls football, in VR.
Next up in your News Feed: Gear VR livestreams
It looks like announcing 360-degree photos and videos for the Gear VR app was a teaser of what Oculus had in mind for this week. Now, Facebook's $2 billion baby is pulling back the curtain on the mobile VR live-streaming it teased last October. Assuming you aren't stateside, it's rolling out to the public today. Domestic users will be able to livestream their VR gameplay from Face Your Fears or Wands, a sorcery simulator, directly to Facebook "in the coming weeks," according to TechCrunch.
Second Life's creator is building a 'WordPress for social VR'
None of this is real. The rocks, the stars, the enormous transmitter standing upright like a needle. It's all a mixture of pixels presented by the Oculus Rift. As I stand on Mars, I urge my senses to surrender to the illusion. I long to be Matt Damon, growing potatoes in a makeshift greenhouse. In reality, I'm standing in a "scene" created by Linden Lab for Sansar, a new virtual-reality platform. A few feet to my left is chief executive Ebbe Altberg, standing in a dinosaur outfit. His avatar waves goofily, breaking my dream within a dream. I can't help but sigh, accepting once more that I'm just a virtual sightseer.
Facebook wants us to take VR selfies with virtual selfie sticks
When Facebook bought Oculus two years ago, many thought the combination was odd. Facebook is a social network while Oculus makes virtual reality headsets. The two didn't seem to go together. Well, at F8, Facebook's developer conference, we might have seen a peek into how Facebook plans to integrate social into VR. It's not just about watching a movie together or linking an Oculus account to Facebook. It actually involves interacting with another person in a virtual space: chatting, laughing, drawing doodles, sharing photos and, as we saw in a demo at F8, even taking virtual selfies with virtual selfie sticks.
