It seems like tech companies have been busying themselves in tinkering some virtual reality devices. Right after Canon revealed their new Virtual Reality 'VR' Device, speculations surfaced that Facebook has been toying with a new kind of virtual reality.
Contrary to what most of us would expect, Facebook is not making any virtual reality device. According to wall street journal, the social networking giant is working on a standalone video app that has been reported to support 360-degree or "spherical" videos. For such matter, users could then change their viewing perspective by just simply tilting their phones.
However, the development of the application is still in its early stage. Details about the said mobile app are still vague and scarce, for it is considered by its developers as a very confidential project. A Project like this would indeed be on the top list of interests of Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook CEO has repeatedly called virtual reality as the next "computing platform," and this drive for virtual reality lead Zuckerberg to purchase the $2 billion virtual reality gaming startup, Oculus.
This enthusiasm for virtual reality and 360-Degree Video App is shared by most of Facebook's bosses. During the scale engineering conference, Jay Parikh, Facebook's VP of global engineering and infrastructure, stated that virtual reality is the next logical step for Facebook as its platform continues to evolve. Parikh via mashable stated that:
"When Facebook was founded, it was primarily a text based site: there was status posts and there were wall posts. We've moved in to a world where most of the world today is focused on photos. But we're quickly moving into this world where I think, in the next couple years, most of the experience on Facebook is going to be about video. It doesn't just stop with videos ... what we see happening in the next couple years is bringing augmented reality and virtual reality to the experience that is on Facebook."
