Facebook wants you to sit in your bedroom wearing a headset and take a virtual vacation with faraway friends and family. Or use your smartphone\u2019s camera to spruce up your dinky apartment, at least virtually.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The promise of augmented and virtual reality was a big focus of Facebook\u2019s annual conference for developers on Tuesday. CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the gathering of programmers and other tech folks by talking about augmented reality tools he envisions on Facebook.<\/p>\n
Augmented reality involves the overlay of computer-generated images into real-world surroundings. Zuckerberg said new phone-based applications might let you create a three-dimensional scene from a single two-dimensional photo or splatter the walls of your house with colorful digital art. (You\u2019d see the digital additions by looking \u201cthrough\u201d your phone at the augmented physical world.)<\/p>\n
MAKING CHORES MORE INTERESTING<\/p>\n
Facebook executives stressed that the technology is still in its early stages, and that the \u201cjourney to the future of augmented reality is just 1 percent finished,\u201d as Deb Liu, vice president of platform and marketplaces, put it.<\/p>\n
Zuckerberg envisions the marriage of augmented reality and Facebook\u2019s camera feature enabling people to make even mundane chores, like doing the dishes, look entertaining with digital effects. Of course, it could also result in people staring into their smartphones even more intently as they marvel at an alternate reality instead of their actual surroundings.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver time, I think this is going to be a really important technology that changes how we use our phones,\u201d Zuckerberg predicted.<\/p>\n
Facebook also launched a virtual world, called Facebook Spaces, designed to let users of its Oculus Rift VR headset hang out with avatar versions of their friends in a virtual world. It\u2019s the first time the company has connected the Rift to its social network in a meaningful way, though it\u2019s a development Zuckerberg hinted at when the company bought Oculus back in 2014 for $2 billion.<\/p>\n
COMING YOUR WAY … EVENTUALLY<\/p>\n
While the new tools and features are impressive, analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research cautioned that that \u201cmost of them won\u2019t be in users\u2019 hands anytime soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s especially true for the Spaces app, since relatively few of Facebook\u2019s 1.9 billion members are using Oculus\u2019s VR headset, which sells for about $500 and requires an expensive computer to make it work.<\/p>\n
But Facebook could still have the edge on rivals such as Snapchat, which also launched some augmented reality features on Tuesday, likely to coincide with Facebook\u2019s news. \u201cFacebook has the resources to move fast in this area and the audience to spread those features much more widely than Snapchat,\u201d Dawson wrote in a brief research note.<\/p>\n
Snap representatives did not immediately respond to an email for comment on Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Facebook\u2019s focus on smartphones over high-tech glasses or headsets makes sense given how familiar they are, said Gartner analyst Brian Blau. \u201cPeople already have cameras and are used to having fun and being creative with them,\u201d he said. \u201cThis will give people a chance to experience augmented reality in a way that isn\u2019t so scary or off-putting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Until the past year or so, it seemed like it would be at least another decade before augmented reality would have a chance to become a widely used technology, said Ficus Kirkpatrick, Facebook\u2019s director of engineering. But advances in image and object recognition, along with the ubiquity of smartphone cameras, \u201chas put us on the course to bring augmented reality,\u201d Kirkpatrick said in an interview.<\/p>\n
CHATTING WITH COMPANIES<\/p>\n
Facebook also announced a bevy of updates to Messenger, its increasingly independent messaging app.<\/p>\n
Messenger head David Marcus claims the app has become the de facto \u201cwhite pages\u201d of messaging, since people can find and chat with friends without knowing their phone number. Now, Messenger wants to do the same for businesses, creating a \u201cyellow pages\u201d of sorts that let companies communicate with their customers.<\/p>\n
Messenger will also let people chat with outside businesses as a group. That would, for instance, allow groups of friends to share Spotify playlists or to make a restaurant reservation through OpenTable that keeps everyone on the same page. The idea is simplify what might otherwise require a flurry of texts and sharing of links.<\/p>\n
CLEVELAND MURDER<\/p>\n
Zuckerberg also briefly addressed a tragedy that took place Monday, when a man posted video of a murder on Facebook. That raised questions about Facebook\u2019s ability to monitor gruesome material on its site.<\/p>\n
The Facebook founder said his company has \u201ca lot of work\u201d to do on this front.\u2014AP<\/p>\n
Image: AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Facebook wants you to sit in your bedroom wearing a headset and take a virtual vacation with faraway friends and family. Or use your smartphone\u2019s camera to spruce up your dinky apartment, at least virtually.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":3947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[96,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3943"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3946,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3943\/revisions\/3946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}