If you thought Facebook’s Oculus has remained out of virtual reality arena, you are wrong. Facebook has tried quite hard to remain ahead of its competitors in the virtual reality space. In order to make sure that its virtual reality offering Oculus remains ahead of its peers, the technology giant announced Facebook Horizon, which the company describes as “an ever-expanding VR world”. Facebook Horizon allows users to interact with other users via digital avatars, and add elements and features to their avatars.
Interact with other players on Facebook’s Ocular Rooms
If you didn’t already know, Facebook enables Oculus users to interact with each other in Oculus Rooms. Horizon is expected to be much bigger than this, and help users to interact with each other easily and seamlessly. Facebook also revealed that it would acquire CTRL Labs. It is a brain computing company that allows users to interact with digital screens using just their thoughts. The company `announced that it plans to release Oculus Quest, in which people can use their hand movements to interact with games and apps, without having to rely upon physical controllers.
Facebook Horizon may become more popular than you might imagine
If we look at the latest news, it becomes clear that a lot of technology companies have begun to experiment with virtual reality. The popularity of this technology is mostly due to the sheer commercial success of the gaming industry. The gaming industry today depends on innovative technologies such as virtual reality, which was unheard of just a few years ago. With this in mind, Facebook seems to have found a market-friendly strategy to attract newer users who are into gaming and virtual reality.
What is cool about Facebook’s VR venture?
Oculus is particularly popular among those who are fans of virtual reality and has consistently ranked high among VR enthusiasts. In the new offering, users can easily interact with their peers in a virtual town square and shift between telepods that are basically different sections of the globe. The company seems to be trying to play catch-up with Microsoft’s Minecraft and Second Life. Second Life was invented by Linden Labs in 2003 and has remained one of the most popular pop culture icons in recent years.
To compete with its peers and ensure that it remains ahead of its competitors, Facebook has tried very hard to dabble with technologies such as virtual reality. Facebook also seems to understand that VR works best in a gaming scenario. VR does not work all that well in a real-life situation when users are in the presence of other people. Facebook seems to be looking at VR-enabled games as a social opportunity where users and players interact with each other while playing exotic games. In fact, Zuckerberg admitted that while the company has dedicated a lot of time towards building social experiences online, the next step is to build similar experiences in the virtual reality arena as well.
Making virtual reality more accessible
Like other technological bigwigs, Facebook continues to strive hard to make virtual reality and other emerging technologies a monetary success. It may prove to be hard for the company initially, but slowly and surely, Facebook’s Horizon product with grow further.
What needs to be seen is how popular virtual reality is going to get among gamers. Tech giant Facebook’s VR ambitions squarely depend on this. Thankfully, it is becoming increasingly clear that gaming enthusiasts find virtual reality-enabled games attractive and worthy enough to be downloaded and played. If you have begun to use Facebook’s virtual reality games and products, do let us know in the comments section below what your experience has been like so far.
