Category: Oculus Venues

Posted on

NextVR Partners With Oculus to Bring Live Events to ‘Oculus Venues’

NextVR, the live event VR broadcasting company, today announced a partnership with Oculus to bring live VR events to Oculus Venues, the company’s upcoming social viewing app that will allow mass viewing of events such as sports, concerts and comedy.

According to a press release, Venues will be available for the new Oculus Go headset and for Gear VR starting this month. To get an idea of what sort of 360 and 180 content the platform has to offer, the NextVR app is also now available for Oculus Go as well as Gear VR.

NextVR says they’ll be providing a bevy of livestreaming VR video such as stand-up comedy from the Gotham Comedy Club, live concerts from up-and-coming bands via School Night, and the International Champions Cup soccer match. Oculus Venues is touted to bring live events to ‘thousands’ of simultaneous users.

“Oculus Venues is a bold move to provide profound social VR engagement and we are honored to deliver such an important part of this new product release from Oculus,” said David Cole, NextVR co-founder and CEO. “NextVR has built a passionate fan base around leading VR content experiences. Venues will satisfy our fans who want to enjoy this type of content on a massively social scale.”

NextVR has livestreamed VR sports broadcasts and other live events thanks to partnerships with the NBA, NHL, NFL, and entertainment companies such as the WWE, making for a wide swath of content using their end-to-end streaming solutions.

The company most recently teased a few new hardware and software tools at CES 2018 earlier this year too that looks to dramatically increase the quality of VR video, even adding volumetric video to the company’s content roadmap.

The post NextVR Partners With Oculus to Bring Live Events to ‘Oculus Venues’ appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

‘Oculus Venues’ Will Let You Watch Sports, Concerts, & More in VR With Up to 1,000 People

During the Oculus Connect 4 keynote today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed a new VR experience in development called Oculus Venues, described as a way to view live sports, concerts, and other live events in VR with friends and strangers alike.

Zuckerberg’s opening speech reinforced his views about VR’s ability to ‘create opportunities for everyone’, and his newly announced long-term goal of getting 1 billion people into VR (on an unspecified timeline). Cost of entry is a major hurdle, which is being addressed with price cuts to existing hardware and a low-cost standalone headset coming early next year, but Facebook’s main focus continues to be on improving the social VR experience.

Image courtesy Oculus

One of their new social VR projects, releasing next year, is Oculus Venues, a way of viewing live events in VR with multiple virtual participants. “Venues lets you watch live concerts and live sports, and premieres of movies and TV shows all around the world with your friends and with thousands of other people at the same time,” said Zuckerberg on stage. “It’s another example of how VR is going to bring us closer together in ways that might not be possible in the physical world.”

On the Oculus blog the company specified “up to 1,000” people for simultaneous viewing. The very brief footage shown during the keynote appeared to show a live concert captured with a VR/360 camera, but then it transitioned to flat footage of the concert in front of many virtual avatars watching together in a virtual arena. The company says they’ll share more on Oculus Venues in the next few months.

The post ‘Oculus Venues’ Will Let You Watch Sports, Concerts, & More in VR With Up to 1,000 People appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Watch Concerts, Movies and More With Social App Oculus Venues Next Year

Social virtual reality (VR) is a big part of Facebook and Oculus’ agenda aiming to bring more and more people together in immersive environments. Today at Oculus Connect 4 (OC4) a new social feature made a brief appearance during the keynote address, Oculus Venues.

Oculus Venues is all about bringing everyone together to enjoy entertainment content. Whether that’s watching concerts or catching premieres of new movies and TV shows, with the new feature offering it up to thousands of people at the same time.

This is very much in a similar vein to what Live Nation or NextVR offers, just this time with the might of Facebook behind it all.

No details were revealed regarding an actual content lineup, with Facebook set to make further announcements next year closer to launch.

As ever, keep reading VRFocus for the latest updates.