Facebook hasn’t held back when it comes to showing its interest in the virtual reality. Following its purchase of Oculus VR back in 2014, the company has made strides by showcasing new video pieces, as well as providing more of a consumer push for the forthcoming device, which will finally launch this year.
This week, the company continued to show its confidence in the medium, as co-founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a surprise appearance at the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked Event during the Mobile World Congress, as seen in the image above, explaining how virtual reality will play such a huge part in the market.
“In the future, VR will enable even more types of connection – like the ability for friends who live in different parts of the world to spend time together and feel like they’re really there with each other,” the company stated, summing up Zuckerberg’s thoughts on the technology.
But the team intends to take VR one step further with a truly devoted social team to help push the technology. “We’ve created a Social VR team at Facebook focused entirely on exploring the future of social interaction in VR,” it confirmed. “This team will explore how people can connect and share using today’s VR technology, as well as long-term possibilities as VR evolves into an increasingly important computing platform.”
The team will work independently alongside Oculus VR to help bring new ideas to fruition, and “build the foundation for tomorrow’s social VR experiences on all platforms” as a result.
It’s unknown just what kind of push is expected just yet, but video will play a big part, considering that Facebook Video has come a long way in just a short amount of time.
Samsung VR will also benefit from this push, since Zuckerberg was at the event to help promote its forthcoming gear. “Gear VR is by far the best mobile VR experience. And that’s’ because it combines the best hardware, from Samsung, with the best software – from Facebook, with Oculus.”
It’s also worth noting that Samsung recently launched a neat new promotion to get more VR units in homes, by providing a free Gear VR device with every pre-order of its forthcoming Galaxy S7.
It’ll be interesting to see what results Facebook’s VR social team produces over the next few months, leading to the arrival of so many units on the market.
