Oculus VR, LLC, or simply known as Oculus, is an American virtual reality technology company founded by Palmer Luckey and Brendan Iribe, founded in June 2012 at Irvine, California.
In 2014, Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion. People were then confused why a huge social media company ought to buy a VR headsets-making company. This move is still a long-term gamble for Facebook Company. The idea is to make ways on how to keep being one of the leading websites for social online communication in times where human-computer interaction is a mainstream.
In a world where almost three-fourths of the population of the world consider the use of online social networks as part of their everyday routine, what would these websites possibly offer when people tend to use their devices without a keyboard, mouse and a monitor?
This is a great leap Facebook wants to step-up to before its competitors do. This is also the reason why they let go of the $2 billion just for Oculus two years ago. And Facebook's one exciting deal to its users is that, the company's first ever social Virtual Reality offering might be released earlier that it was expected.
So far, the company has been internally prototyping to find out how to create a compelling social virtual reality experience. This is first evidenced in an experimentation back in April during Facebook's F8 conference when they revealed their first social VR experience that allowed users to visit photospheres together, take virtual selfies, and draw interactive accessories to customize their avatars.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed earlier this month at the Oculus Connect Developer Conference the latest iteration of the company's social VR prototype which featured new avatars, videospheres, and even the ability to make video calls from the real world into the virtual world via Facebook Messenger.
When asked whether Facebook plans to wait and put out their social VR offering as a big company-wide launch, or if the public would get their hands on it sooner, Facebook Social VR Product Manager Mike Booth said, "As soon as possible."
When asked if people will likely to experience Facebook VR at the end of 2016, "When it's done," he replied.
Join the Conversation