Virtually Hang Out with Friends – VR Application ‘Facebook Spaces’ Now Live
When Facebook bought the virtual reality innovator Oculus back in 2014, many expected the company’s immersion device to integrate with the social media platform in some way down the line. Just the thought of in-your-face instant messages and first-person perspective Farmville is enough to get anyone excited for that potential utopia. The future is now because a beta version of the new VR application Facebook Spaces has finally made its way to the Oculus store. While it’s not as wacky as we were jokingly expecting, it does seem to take the essential social media experience into the new dimension.
Rather than a straight-up Facebook browsing experience, Spaces allows users to hang out with their friends within a virtual environment. As is the case with most RPGs, the first step is to create a custom avatar that represents the user. After that, through the use of an Oculus Rift and Touch motion controllers, people can have conversations, share media, and play games with others as their digital selves.
“Spending time with friends and family creates many of our most meaningful memories,” Facebook’s head of VR , Rachel Franklin said in a statement, “but it’s impossible to always be physically near the people we care about. That’s where the magic of virtual reality comes in.”
The app also allows non-Rift users to video chat with the digital world through messenger, which could be both really cool and understandably jarring. One thing Spaces seems to be aiming for is making it an authentic Facebook experience, emphasizing the “social” and “media” parts of the social media site. Since it is so new, its unknown what else the app is capable of or will be in the future. One thing you can be sure of is that Don’t Feed the Gamers will cover any information as soon as it comes out.
What do you think of Facebook Spaces? Is it a great tech demo for what VR can do, or is it creating a rift between the digital and physical world? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to follow DFTG on Twitter for more gaming and entertainment (and tech) news in the future. For more virtual reality news, check out these next few stories:
Eric Hall2712 Posts
Phone-browsing Wikipedia in one hand and clutching his trusty controller in the other, the legendary Eric Hall spreads his wealth of knowledge as a writer for Don't Feed the Gamers. Be sure to catch his biweekly "Throwback Thursday" segment for a nostalgic look at trivia from the past.
