![]() ![]() Messenger head David Marcus claims the app has become the de facto “white pages” of messaging, since people can find and chat with friends without knowing their phone number. But advances in image and object recognition, along with the ubiquity of smartphone cameras, “has put us on the course to bring augmented reality,” Kirkpatrick said in an interview.įacebook also announced a bevy of updates to Messenger, its increasingly independent messaging app. “This will give people a chance to experience augmented reality in a way that isn’t so scary or off-putting.” 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’s director of engineering. “People already have cameras and are used to having fun and being creative with them,” he said. Facebook’s focus on smartphones over high-tech glasses or headsets makes sense given how familiar they are, said Gartner analyst Brian Blau. Snap representatives did not immediately respond to an email for comment on Tuesday afternoon. “Facebook has the resources to move fast in this area and the audience to spread those features much more widely than Snapchat,” Dawson wrote in a brief research note. 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’s news. While the new tools and features are impressive, analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research cautioned that that “most of them won’t be in users’ hands anytime soon.” That’s especially true for the Spaces app, since relatively few of Facebook’s 1.9 billion members are using Oculus’s VR headset, which sells for about $500 and requires an expensive computer to make it work. It’s the first time the company has connected the Rift to its social network in a meaningful way, though it’s a development Zuckerberg hinted at when the company bought Oculus back in 2014 for $2 billion. 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. “Over time, I think this is going to be a really important technology that changes how we use our phones,” Zuckerberg predicted. 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. Zuckerberg envisions the marriage of augmented reality and Facebook’s camera feature enabling people to make even mundane chores, like doing the dishes, look entertaining with digital effects. (You’d see the digital additions by looking “through” your phone at the augmented physical world.)įacebook executives stressed that the technology is still in its early stages, and that the “journey to the future of augmented reality is just 1 percent finished,” as Deb Liu, vice president of platform and marketplaces, put it. 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. CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the gathering of programmers and other tech folks by talking about augmented reality tools he envisions on Facebook.Īugmented reality involves the overlay of computer-generated images into real-world surroundings. The promise of augmented and virtual reality was a big focus of Facebook’s annual conference for developers on Tuesday. Or use your smartphone’s camera to spruce up your dinky apartment, at least virtually. SAN JOSE: Facebook wants you to sit in your bedroom wearing a headset and take a virtual vacation with faraway friends and family. ![]() Computer-generated images into real-world surroundings CALIFORNIA: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at his company’s annual F8 developer conference in San Jose, Calif. ![]()
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