VR meeting space sketchy but Facebook will nail it eventually

I’m living Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s dream, enjoying life in virtual reality, munching virtual cheesecake.

I’m living Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s dream, enjoying life in virtual reality, munching virtual cheesecake that’s thankfully kilojoule free.

I’m eating this cheesecake slice standing behind a bright blue virtual table that’s totally at odds with the tranquil surroundings of a countryside park complete with canoodling couples, a lake and jetty, and lots of grass and trees.

There’s space at the table for three Facebook friends I can invite and with whom I can share photos, chat and take in the ambience.

Welcome to the world of Facebook Spaces Beta, the first iteration of the social network’s brand new social virtual reality experience. Anyone on Facebook can share the park experience with their friends. You can invite them to lunch, and together chat, share photos, draw objects, take photos - even selfies.

I say “anyone” but in reality, getting together in Facebook with your friends is strictly for early adopters. For starters, you need to own an Oculus Rift VR headset, a pair of Oculus Touch hand controllers, and two Oculus sensors that can process both headset and Touch movements.

Facebook spaces - now you can meet up in VR - yay!

That’s around $1300 for starters. And you need a fast computer to process the VR stream. That adds to more than $2000 unless you already own the gear.

Then you need patience to go through the set-up.

You go to the Facebook Spaces webpage (https://www.facebook.com/spaces), link your Facebook and Oculus accounts, and download the Facebook Spaces app which you find in the Oculus Store.

If you’re not familiar with the Oculus ecosystem, I’d recommend doing tutorials to master using your virtual hands which is the capability that Oculus Touch brings. You need to learn how to grasp, pickup and lay down objects and point before venturing into Spaces..

You then load the Spaces app, and you’re away. I must say that the first blush version of Spaces isn’t sophisticated. Facebook itself would no doubt agree. It estimates that the high quality VR experiences it wants to offer are 5 to 10 years away.

The Beta experience restricted us to being in this park, but I’d bet soon you can thrust yourself into a myriad of other virtual experiences and meet your friends.

Rivals ecosystems such as Altspace VR let you navigate rooms, buildings and mazes, walk with friends in VR, watch Netflix with them in a virtual theatre, and even attend foreign language classes together. Each person is represented by an avatar and can interact with other avatars.

The control table in Facebook Spaces

Readers will remember me attending the Prince Purple Rain memorial concert last year held by AltspaceVR on a virtual island. I could virtually move around the island and chat with Prince fans. Prince clips from YouTube played on a big virtual screen in the background. In VR it looked huge.

Facebook’s Beta experience is restricted to standing at the table, and sharing media with friends. You don’t get to walk around. Bear in mind this will change radically once Facebook has spent up to $US3bn on VR, as it says it could do.

Nevertheless there were fun things to do at the table. I could change my avatar - the cartooned version of me that appears in VR. Select one of your Facebook photos of yourself, and the app will generate a selection of cartooned images for you to pick from. You can choose whether your avatar wears glasses, and change their t-shirt colour and style.

My avatar doesn’t look much like me but I added some red-framed glasses similar to what I wear in real life.

The fun starts when you point your finger at the buttons on the virtual console. (Learning to point virtually does take time however.) The “media” button lets you choose photos to show friends around the table. You can select galleries of saved Facebook photos, timeline photos, photos posted by your followers, or explore 360 degree experiences offered by Facebook.

Chris Griffith takes a virtual selfie in Facebook Spaces

You can pick up a virtual pencil, select a colour and start drawing in mid air. I ended up playing virtual noughts-and-crosses in this way. Note that you need to learn how to turn off brush mode when you’re moving from one drawing point to the next, otherwise your creation is a mess.

Select “tools” and a selfie camera appears. You can take snaps of your cartooned-self in VR and share them.

You can also make video calls to Facebook friends in the real world from your VR world. I’d recommend warning them first, otherwise they may get a shock when they are greeted by you as an avatar. Note that it can be a tedious process scanning through screen after screen to find a Facebook friend who’s online to call. Note to Facebook: The video call selection process needs an overhaul.

You can also change positions around the table. But that’s about it.

As I said, it’s early days, but because it’s Facebook with billions of users, if anyone can pull off social VR, then it’s this company. One day, when one of your contacts has a birthday, you may be invited to a Facebook created VR birthday party where you mingle with that person’s friends.

Or when you travel, Facebook might invite you to share a virtual space with like minded travellers where you can swap notes.

The Australian technology journalist Chris Griffith makes a call to the "real world" from virtual reality.

This is the start of Mark Zuckerberg’s VR dream, the notion that people will don headsets and share VR experiences together. It began in 2014 when Facebook paid about $US3bn to buy Oculus VR. In February last year, Zuckerberg announced he would turn Facebook into a “Social VR” platform.

“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,” he said.

“We’ve created a Social VR team at Facebook focused entirely on exploring the future of social interaction in VR. This team will explore how people can connect and share using today’s VR technology, as well as long-term possibilities as VR evolves into an increasingly important computing platform.”

But he’ll have to decide whether Spaces becomes an exclusive platform for Oculus users with cash to splash to join the platform. Or whether the imperative is to allow as many as possible to use Spaces. That means developing a cheap Oculus headset, or opening the platform to third party devices such as Samsung Gear VR and competitors.

Facebook Spaces

Price: Free but you need an Oculus Rift rig and Oculus Touch hands

Rating: 7/10 (needs work)