Facebook to bring friends together in a virtual reality world

Friends living thousands of kilometres apart will be able to meet in a virtual world under plans outlined by Facebook.

Friends living thousands of kilometres apart will be able to meet in a virtual world under plans outlined by Facebook yesterday.

The vision, in a Facebook blogpost, coincided with the ­appearance of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at Samsung’s launch of its Galaxy S7 smartphone at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, an annual trade show spruiking all things telco.

Samsung and Korean rival LG unveiled new premium smartphones — Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and LG’s G5 — and also announced 360-degree cameras that let users create virtual reality movies. Samsung’s is called the Gear 360, LG’s is the LG 360 Cam.

Users watch the movies while wearing virtual reality headsets.

Facebook owns Oculus VR, which has developed a high-resolution virtual reality headset to be released in April. Working alongside Oculus VR, Samsung has developed a lower resolution, mobile version known as Gear VR. The long-term aim is to stream footage captured at one location and let people elsewhere in the world immerse themselves in that environment.

Yesterday at Samsung’s launch event, Mr Zuckerberg outlined how Facebook was optimising video to reduce the drain on internet bandwidth to make virtual interactions possible across the world.

He said Facebook’s technology would show only that part of the 360-degree vista that a viewer was actually looking at in the highest quality, instead of delivering the entire 360-degree video in high definition. This capability would be brought to Samsung’s Gear VR, he said.

In a blogpost yesterday, Facebook said it was creating a team focused entirely on the future of social interaction in virtual ­reality.

“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,” Facebook said.

Last year, Samsung organised for an electrical contractor in Queensland, to be virtually present at the birth of his son in Perth. Given the bandwidth involved in streaming 360-degree video is large, Samsung set up special communications to make the streaming possible. But Facebook wants that to be an ordinary, everyday occurrence.