Category: Facebook

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: “We’ve Invested $250M in Funding Oculus Content”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: “We’ve Invested $250M in Funding Oculus Content”

Facebook’s Oculus VR is one of the most iconic companies in the VR industry. It helped kickstart the revolution and is doing its part to continue pushing the industry forward. Today at Oculus Connect 3, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on stage that the company had invested $250 million in funding Oculus content.

The topic of exclusivity is still a hot button issue in the industry, with the debate between Oculus Home and the Steam marketplace. Whether or not you agree with the concept of VR software exclusives, there’s no doubt that Oculus’ commitment to funding projects is helping spur VR’s rapid rise as of late.

Following this announcement, Zuckerberg also announced that they are planning to inject at least another $250 million in funding for Oculus content creators as well. The VR company also announced a new education section will be added to Oculus Home for better sorting and emphasis on content.

Oculus’ Nate Mitchell then also announced that the company will cover Unreal Engine licensing fees for developers that earn up to $5 million in revenue. And finally, they company also announced that $10 million would be dedicated to diversity-based projects.

Stay tuned at UploadVR for all of the latest news and updates from Oculus Connect 3. You can read more about their upcoming Social VR plans here.

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Facebook Reveals Social VR Features At Oculus Connect 3

Facebook Reveals Social VR Features At Oculus Connect 3

Mark Zuckerberg promised something new for today’s Oculus Connect 3 keynote and he didn’t disappoint; Facebook revealed new social features for the Oculus Rift.

The CEO of the social networking company took to the stage at the start of the highlight of the annual developer conference in San Jose to reveal the software. Revealed was what looks like a pretty impressive update to the social VR features demonstrated at the company’s F8 conference earlier this year. He demoed it with two colleagues, all of whom were using the Rift and pairs of Oculus Touch controllers.

Impressively detailed avatars met in 360 degree environments, their facial animations would change based on the expression in their voice and they could travel to other destinations. Riffing somewhat on the Oculus Toybox demo, they’d play with cards and even used magic marker-style pens to draw swords which they could then hold and pretend to fight with.

Facebook messenger was also accessible in the software with live video calls.

More to come…

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Expect ‘Something New’ At Oculus Connect 3 States Mark Zuckerberg

The Oculus Connect 3 event may have begun today but it’s tomorrow that everyone’s waiting for. The company will be holding its keynote address where all the big announcements will be made. Most of those already expected revolve around the Oculus Touch motion controllers, but Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has teased there’s more in store.

Zuckerberg posted an image of himself today using an Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch controllers. Captioned with the image was: “Getting ready to demo something new we’ve been building in virtual reality. Tune in tomorrow at 10am pacific time to hear about the future of VR at Oculus Connect.”

Mark Zuckerberg - Oculus Touch

The social networking giant has long been touting the social implications of virtual reality (VR), and tomorrows announcement could very well be the first stages of Facebook merging its platform with Oculus Rift.

Facebook has been experimenting with the social side of VR for awhile now with the CEO previously stating back in 2015: “Our mission to give people the power to experience anything. Even if you don’t have the ability to travel somewhere, or to be with someone in person, or even if something is physically impossible to build in our analogue world, the goal is to help build a medium that will give you the ability to do all of these things you might not otherwise be able to do. This will be incredibly powerful as a communication medium as well.

We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to finally find out what Facebook’s possible intentions are for the future of VR, and VRFocus will be there to bring you the news as it happens.

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VR developers turn against Oculus Rift over founder’s pro-Trump support

Financial backing of pro-Trump trolls causes rift with VR games developers as Palmer Luckey attempts to backtrack

Developers of virtual reality games are pulling their support for Oculus after the involvement of its co-founder Palmer Luckey in a pro-Trump and anti-Clinton group was revealed.

Related: 'VR isn't a thing you do it's a place you visit': readers review Oculus Rift

Until @PalmerLuckey steps down from his position at @oculus, we will be cancelling Oculus support for our games.

It’s not about “politics”, it’s about the face of a company financially backing racist trolls. He is free to vote for whoever he pleases.

Hey @oculus, @PalmerLuckey's actions are unacceptable. NewtonVR will not be supporting the Oculus Touch as long as he is employed there.

Oculus is FAR from the only product on the VR market. And it can just gather dust from now on.

Continue reading...
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Oculus: Oculus Account mit Facebook verbinden

Ihr habt zu wenige Freunde auf Oculus Home und möchtet dies gerne ändern? Dann könnt ihr jetzt euren Oculus Account mit eurem Facebook Account verbinden und schauen, ob noch andere Freunde auf Facebook einen Account bei Oculus besitzen.

Oculus Account mit Facebook verbinden

oculus-account-mit-facebook-verbinden

Um den Account mit Facebook zu verbinden, müsst ihr zunächst eure Oculus Software auf die neuste Version updaten. Anschließend geht ihr auf das Symbol mit dem Zahnrad in der oberen rechten Ecke. Im aufklappenden Menü geht ihr auf Account und dann auf „Linked Accounts / Verknüpfte Konten“ und klickt auf „Connect / Verbinden“.

Jetzt seid ihr schon am Ziel. Wenn ihr auf verbinden klickt, zeigt euch Oculus zunächst, was passiert, wenn ihr den Account verbindet:

  • Wenn du Freunde auf Facebook hast, die ihren Account auch mit Oculus verbunden haben, dann tauchen diese automatisch auch in deiner Freundesliste auf Oculus Home auf.
  • Dein Facebook-Name wird dein echter Name auf Oculus (dieses Feature hätte sich Oculus gerne sparen können).
  • Wenn du in den Einstellung für die Privatsphäre deinen echten Namen unterdrückst, können nur deine Facebook-Freunde deinen echten Namen sehen

Was uns wirklich nicht gefällt, ist der Fakt, dass Oculus den Namen von Facebook übernimmt. Außerdem gebt ihr somit vermutlich auch viele Daten an Facebook ab, falls Facebook diese nicht sowieso bereits besitzt, da Oculus mittlerweile zu Facebook gehört.

Der Beitrag Oculus: Oculus Account mit Facebook verbinden zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

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Facebook Owned Oculus Receives An Emmy For Its VR Short Film “Henry”

Oculus – a VR Startup, which was purchased by Facebook, Inc. back in 2014 for $2 billion, has received an Emmy Award for ‘Henry’ which is nothing but its virtual reality short film.

Henry is believed to be the first-ever original virtual reality content to receive this illustrious award. The film which is developed by Oculus Story Studio, one of the most important wings of Oculus, is directed by Ramiro Lopez Dau, who has the experience of working on projects such as “Cars 2” and “Brave.” Yes, that’s right, Lopez Dau, who worked as an animator with Pixar Animation Studios earlier, has enough knowledge and experience as far as developing an animated short film is concerned.

The 9-minutes-long VR film, which is narrated by American actor, producer and voice actor Elijah Wood is awarded an Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Interactive Program.

Earlier, the award has gone to applications such as “AMEX Unstaged: Taylor Swift” and a video project called “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.”

Henry, which talks about the story of an adorable little hedgehog is actually a comedy and the second virtual reality content from Oculus Story Studio. The movie is all about a cute hedgehog, who is a great fond of hugs irrespective of his prickly spines.

According to a report, while talking about the importance of the movie in the context of virtual reality industry, Lopez Dau said, “We hope this represents a tipping point for the VR industry.”

“We’ve wanted to show that VR is an art form – a place that welcomes storytellers and that even at this very, very early stage it can be a powerful tool for storytelling. This Emmy validates that vision,” he further added.

The company has established its Oculus Story Studio back in 2015 and launched its first ever virtual reality short film called “Lost’ at the same time.

The Oculus Story Studio unit of the company is totally packed with highly accomplished animators as well as filmmakers, who are given the accountability of figuring out new and creative ways of storytelling, as far as the field of virtual reality is concerned.

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The post Facebook Owned Oculus Receives An Emmy For Its VR Short Film “Henry” appeared first on Infinityleap - Technology stops for no one..

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Zuckerberg Says “VR and AR are going to be the most social platform that has ever existed”

I’m sure we all got the notification for Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, going live in Rome today for a Q&A session, and during that he was presented with the question of how will we see augmented reality (AR) change our social lives, so which he responded in a rather big way.

Zuckerberg went straight to the point and bit the bullet with a blunt statement: “I think that VR and AR are going to be the most social platform that has ever existed.”

zuckerberg in rome

He went on to compare the VR and AR to other computer innovations, and how it sets out on the timeline: “If you think about the history of computing, every 10 to 15 years a big new platform comes along. So, we had desktop computers, we have browsers for the internet, and now we have mobile phones, and it’s great but what we have now is not the end of the line because we’re all going to get to a point that in five or 10 years we’re all using virtual reality – probably more like 10 years than five  for everyone to use it”

When he concentrated just on AR, however, he did admit that it won’t come in the same way that VR has: “What I think we’re going to see there is that is going to come to mobile phones first before we get some kind of smart glasses that overlay stuff in the world.” He went on to say that we will be seeing many more applications like Pokémon GO.

If you missed out on the full Q&A session, it is still available to watch from the beginning on Facebook.

For more on the latest developments in the industry, as well as all the news, updates, and features in the world of VR, make sure to check back with VRFocus.

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Unity Technologies and Facebook Join Together to Bring Gaming to the Social Network

Yesterday it was announced that Unity Technologies and Facebook had joined together in a “strategic partnership” to bring gaming to Facebook and open up a new platform for Unity developers – and that includes the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) developers.

The types of videogames haven’t been specified, so it can be assumed that developers of the VR and AR variety cannot be left out – especially as Unity is described as a platform for 2D, 3D, VR and AR, and Facebook owns Oculus and is trying to pioneer online 360 video. Ignoring VR and AR could even be called impossible for these two.

Unity Technologies banner

The plan is to create a “new functionality” into Unity that creates a straight forward path of exporting and publishing games onto Facebook, allowing Unity developers to get their creations onto the social network quickly.

“Developers channel their talent and passion into creating amazing games, but development is only part of the challenge,” said Elliot Solomon, Vice President, Business Development at Unity Technologies in a press release. “Integrating tools that provide effortless access to Facebook’s network is a key part of helping developers find the success they deserve.”

“Our mission is to give people the power to discover, play and share the games they love with the people they care about,” said Leo Olebe, Director of Global Games Partnerships at Facebook. “Unity is the world’s leading game development platform. It’s great to be working with them to help developers find new audiences for the games they pour their hearts into.”

Applications are open for a limited group of developers to currently receiving immediate access to a closed-alpha build of the new export to Facebook in Unity 5.4, and applications will close on 31st August.

For more on the latest in the world of VR, make sure to check back with VRFocus.