Facebook announced at its F8 Developer's Conference on April 12th that, in addition to the VR-ready Oculus Rift we have today, it plans to bring Augmented Reality (AR) into the fold of their social machine.
The company is looking to dominate the 'new' reality market, no doubt about it. Just look at the lofty goals in its official roadmap:
Augmented reality is still taking baby steps in getting useful technology to market; Google Glass fizzled, and one of the most hyped AR apps is catching Pokémon in real life. Then you have HoloLens from Microsoft and Magic Leap—both undoubtedly very far along in the process, but also at least a couple of years from being consumer-ready.
But Mark Zuckerberg is pushing AR, suggesting perhaps a counter to Google Glass and the bulky hardware required with current-gen VR headsets.
A roadmap is just a projection of the hopes a company has for the future, but it's clear Facebook is gunning to be at the forefront of VR/AR. Zuckerberg said at the F8 conference, "VR has the potential to be the most social platform." I mean, who wouldn't want to play ping-ping or shoot lasers at friends without needing to be in the same place.
For a little more insight and video demos of Facebook's vision of the future, check out this video, about 40 minutes in.
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