At Facebook's F8 Conference, an estimated five thousand attendees  were delighted to learn that they would be taking away an Oculus Go headset, which started shipping on May 1st  with a price tag of $199. 

Oculus Go isn't as powerful as the Ouclus Rift and doesn't require a computer connection. Accompanying the hardware, Facebook also announced Oculus TV, a feature that will put users in a virtual living room where they can watch shows from ESPN, Netflix, Hulu, and Showtime together. Over 1,000 apps, games, and experiences are already available for the device.

The new VR hardware showcased at F8 was the prototype of the Oculus Half Dome which lets users to see more of their physical environment while wearing the headset and introduces some sophisticated features to allow them to shift focus between objects. It expands the field-of-view from 100 degrees to 140 degrees, allowing users to see more of the visual world in their periphery even though it is no bigger than the existing Rift headset thanks to continued advances in lens technology.

A new version of AR Studio, the tool for making interactive experiences for the Facebook camera that was introduced at last year's F8, was announced. Facebook is partnering with Sketchfab to integrate its library of downloadable models into AR Studio to be added directly to projects. Also in the near future it will be possible to add custom libraries to AR Studio with a simple JS library API.

Other new features of AR Studio include:

• Tracking: Use AR Target Tracker, Body Tracking, Hand Tracking, High-Fidelity Face Tracking, and more to follow movement and tie it to your experience
• Location AR: Tie your AR effects to places in the real world, making pre-determined experiences available when people get to a certain location
• Semantic Scene Understanding: Create experiences that are contextually aware, like having heat waves rise up when a coffee cup is recognized in the scene

Also on the software side, Facebook demoed an experimental feature for using machine learning technology and point-cloud reconstruction to transform 2D photographic prints (and videos) into immersive 3D worlds. As the presenter put it:

"You pop on a VR headset and you're there again. Walking around. Looking around corners. Seeing the places where your memories happened"

No time timeframe  was provided for when this might be available.

A new feature that Facebook is launching initially in closed beta with four select companies - ASUS, Nike, Kia, and Sephora - is the ability for brands to integrate AR camera effects into Messenger. Intended to help people get instant feedback about potential purchases, this feature will let developers build experiences that let people virtually customize or try on merchandise or walk through new products. It uses AR technology to superimposes a computer generated image onto the real world. When communicating with one of these companies on Facebook Messenger, users can prompt the company  to open up the camera to use the feature. Nike's first implementation will be releasing a new pair of sneakers:

For more news from F8 see Facebook F8 - We Are The Enemy! 

More Information

F8 2018: Oculus Go Available Now for $199

Oculus Go

AR Studio 

Related Articles

Facebook F8 - We Are The Enemy!

Facebook Roadmap For Connectivity, AI and VR/AR

Facebook Buys Oculus VR

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin.

Comments

Make a Comment or View Existing Comments Using Disqus

or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info