Editor’s Note: The long awaited Oculus Rift, the highly touted Virtual Reality machine, has finally begun shipping. Last week we gave you a perspective from Contributing Editor Tim Bajarin on why he thinks VR is going to be a big deal for 50+. Here’s his take on the logic behind Facebook’s big bet on this exciting technology platform.
At CES in early 2014, I got a chance to see the Oculus Rift VR headset that was introduced at this show. Although VR had been around for 20+ years, Oculus proposed that it was time to bring VR to a broader audience. Though gaming was its focus, the founders of Oculus felt it could be used for more than just games.
Like most of us who got the demo, I was blown away by the experience. But, unlike most who saw it at that time, I was not a serious gamer, so I started trying to envision what else Oculus could be used for in the future.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I imagined it could be used to bring people together in various ways. Imagine creating a virtual conference room so that people who were thousands of miles away could look as they were all in the same conference room. Stretching my imagination, I thought that since I am a grandfather with grandkids living in another city, something like Oculus could allow us to interact with the grandchildren as if we were altogether in the same place. Again, imagine sitting next to the little ones on a virtual carnival ride?
Various reporters at CES who knew I had seen the Oculus demo asked me what I thought about it. My feelings were that Oculus could be the way VR finally got to a broader market. But I also told one reporter that this product would probably be purchased by some big players such as Google or Facebook since its impact on their businesses could be substantial.
So I was not surprised when, in spring of 2014, Facebook indeed purchased Oculus and brought it inside the company to start finding ways to use it in their social network. To Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s credit, he kept them on their current path towards using it for VR gaming. But he also set them in the direction of finding ways to make it possible for individuals on Facebook to interact with each other as if they were in the same room or a virtual setting as part of a more enriched and immersive social experience.
“We’re making a long-term bet that immersive virtual and augmented reality will become a part of people’s daily lives,” Zuckerberg told reporters the day Facebook announced the $2 billion deal, saying “it had the potential to be the ‘most social platform ever.'” In an excellent overview on Zuckerberg’s Social VR vision in Wired, journalist Cade Metz states:
But Facebook bought the technology as much for what it could do tomorrow as today. Zuckerberg describes it not only as a social platform, but as the next fundamental computing environment—the step after the smartphone. “There was the PC, then web, then phone,” he says. “I think that something like VR and AR is going to be next platform.” In other words, it’s another way of interacting with our computers—and a way of interacting with the world.
I find Zuckerberg’s perspective on this very important and one that the tech industry needs to embrace in a big way. As he states above, he sees VR and AR (augmented reality) as the next platform for personal computing. To their credit, Google and Microsoft both agree with Zuckerberg and are crafting their own products and services using VR and AR. And rumors suggest Apple too has its eyes set on VR and AR and is doing a large project in which VR and AR will be a big part of its future as well.
However, in my discussions with some PC players, it is not clear that they understand the magnitude or shift in the computing landscape that VR and AR could bring. Because of current business models, they are stuck in an old world design metaphor when it comes to creating new products. I know they are all looking at VR and AR, but they are having a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to integrate VR and AR into current OS platforms and designs.
What also intrigues me is the idea that Facebook and Zuckerberg could end up upstaging Microsoft and other competitors by crafting a VR and AR platform that could have their own API’s and app development system and as a result make Facebook the medium for apps and services beyond their social network in the future.
I am not sure what Zuckerberg’s end game is yet, but with the pieces of the puzzle he is putting together, he and Facebook could emerge as an even more valuable company in the future by using a social network as the base for all types of immersive competing apps and services.
Most of us in the Tech50+ crowd grew up with computers that have pretty much stayed the same for the last 30+ years. Yes, their have been enhancements to the PC experience with things like graphical UI’s, multimedia computing, the Internet, and new form factors in desktops and laptops and our computing experiences evolved over time.
But think about this- VR and AR as a platform for innovation represents a huge leap forward in making our future computing experience more immersive and will give us a completely new metaphor for computing. That means, in our lifetime, we got to see the birth of the PC age and most of us will also get to witness what may actually be the most exciting new phase in personal computing. I know there is skepticism around VR, but for those of us who have gotten to actually play with and test this new technology, I am pretty confident we’re seeing the future of computing. I’m excited that many of us who blazed the first 30 years of this PC trail will also get to experience what I think is the next revolution in personal computing.
The post Facebook’s Bet That VR Will Be Social appeared first on Tech50+.