VR mega update: Facebook Spaces, Facebook AR, Google Earth & Microsoft Headsets

After Easter weekend, we were all relaxed, digesting all chocolate eggs we have eaten. When, suddenly, Tuesday came and gave us a hard wake up with a bazillion of virtual reality news! Here you are a small digest if you missed something!

Facebook Spaces

At F8 conference, Facebook has announced Spaces, its social VR environment.

So, what is Spaces? Spaces is that cool application that Facebook showcased at Oculus Connect 3 …the one we believed it was pure fluff.

Well, it seems that it is not fluff… since now it has been released! With Spaces you will be able to cartoonize yourself and then meet all your friends in VR!

Palmer Luckey departs from Facebook, goodbye man

When I arrived in the office today, my buddy Gianni told me as first thing: “Have you read about Palmer Luckey? He’s just quitted from facebook!“. Yesterday I had no time to check VR news sites, so no, I didn’t know that and so yes, I was enormously shocked. I hoped that today was April the 1st, but this was not an April’s fool. It’s real. He’s gone.

Everyone is reporting this memorable Facebook statement about this departure, so I’m doing the same here

Palmer will be dearly missed. Palmer’s legacy extends far beyond Oculus. His inventive spirit helped kickstart the modern VR revolution and helped build an industry. We’re thankful for everything he did for Oculus and VR, and we wish him all the best.

The translation is

Palmer doesn’t work for facebook anymore. We don’t care, but we pretend to do.

I admit I’m very sad. I’m very sad even more because a bit I recognize myself in him. Well, less rich, less famous, less successful, less lucky… but as a VR startupper I feel his pain.

The greatest problem of Social VR is friction, not adoption

Today I was reading an UploadVR article about social VR: the article showcased how social VR will be enormous (with Facebook and others investing lots of money into it) but it has a present problem called adoption. I agree with everything inside that article (I’ve in this blog various articles that say that social VR is cool, like this one): social VR will be enormous and super-important (let’s all think how it will be cool to meet in VR with our far away grandpa or how it will be cool cooperating with teamworkers that are on the opposite side of the planet); but currently it has a clear adoption problem, meaning that very few people have VR devices, so we can’t meet with our friends in VR: many of my friends do not own a VR headset (some of them do not even know what VR is), so having a social VR ecosystem is very difficult. It will need time, they say: when we’ll all have VR devices, social VR will be huge, will be fantastic.

An example of AltspaceVR environment and avatars (image from AltspaceVR Inc.)

And I agree. Or maybe not. After reading the article I had a “ehm, no” feeling. In my opinion, social VR will be great, but it will not be enormous. I mean, it will be like Skype (and Skype is a service we all use) but it will not be like Facebook. And the reason is friction.

Highlights of Oculus Connect 3

Some days ago I wrote a blog post about what to expect from the Oculus Connect 3, the greatest Oculus event of the year. I made some predictions… and I got right with three and a half out of five! Am I a magician? Well, it would be cool, but actually it’s only matter of being informed on the VR world and just being a bit visionary… even if the magician story is the one I actually tell girls to impress them:)

Ok, so… what have been the most important announcements of Oculus Connect 3? Oculus has made a short recap on its blog and I want to enhance it with some thoughts.

Oculus Connect 3: what to expect from it?

From 5th to 7th of October, Oculus will hold its annual event in San José, California: the Oculus Connect. It will be a day where super-smart people (like god-like programmer John Carmack or super smart-man Michael Abrash) will hold super-interesting talks and where Oculus will make lots of important announcements.

It will be an event totally worth to be seen. The talks of Oculus Connect are always interesting… look at this one made by Michael Abrash some times ago when he talked about illusions perceived by our brains:

But the thing we are waiting the most are the announcements. What will Oculus announce? We don’t know… but we can make some speculations. And I hope you will speculate with me in the comments, saying your predictions about the next Oculus Connect!