Facebook demos taking selfies in VR

Facebook chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer just showed how to take a selfie of yourself and a friend inside a virtual reality 360-degree photo.

He showed off the demo during a keynote at the F8 event in San Francisco today. It’s part of Facebook’s plan to make VR, which can be a solitary experience, more social. This helps explain more about why Facebook paid $2 billion to buy Oculus VR, maker of the Oculus Rift VR headset, in 2014.

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In the demo, Schroepfer donned a VR headset and showed how he could communicate with a friend using the Toy Box avatars, which show an artistic representation of your friend’s face and hands in VR. They visited 360-degree photos together, and then produced a smartphone and a selfie stick. They used it to take a selfie of their avatars visiting a faraway place. That was a pretty cool demo, and it is a way to make VR more appealing to a larger number of people.

Yesterday, the company showed Facebook Surround 360 camera for capturing VR videos of the world without a lot of costly post processing. Sadly, Facebook hasn’t said how many Oculus Rift units it has shipped yet. It has only said that it had a great launch, but has had some “component shortages” that are resulting in delivery delays.

“This addresses a key thing limiting the explosion in 3D content,” Schroepfer said.

After he showed the demo of taking a selfie, Schroepfer said, “How’s that for social presence?” And he got a big cheer.

Here’s an image of touring a VR photo together.

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VR demo at #F8, one person remotely interacting with another, video pic.twitter.com/VzXkd3bRI9

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) April 13, 2016

And here’s an image of taking a virtual reality selfie with a friend.

Selfies even happen in VR #F8 pic.twitter.com/wsVITJ1MlU

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) April 13, 2016

And here’s a video of the demo.

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