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Pandemic will usher in a new era for virtual reality, Zuckerberg says

Facebook VR
Facebook VR

The pandemic has helped usher in a new era of virtual and augmented reality, Mark Zuckerberg has said.

The Facebook chief believes that calls where a person’s hologram can appear next to you and where you can interact with virtual objects has become “much more mainstream” and will continue to do so.

The social media giant owns virtual reality headset firm Oculus, which has just launched its latest “Quest 2” headset aimed at a more affordable market.

Speaking at the company’s “Facebook Connect” event, Mr Zuckerberg said that the pandemic had increased people’s adoption of the new technologies.

“For one, the concept of remote presence with video is now much more mainstream than it was before,” he told The Verge.

Future of offce
Future of offce

“Before it was kind of a work tool that sometimes people used when they had to. But now like everyone’s on it all the time. So that notion of wanting to be present remotely with people, I think is much more mainstream now — through video, not necessarily through AR and VR.”

The Facebook founder also said that his outlook had shifted on AR and VR and said that virtual reality is going to be “quite important” and that it will “grow significantly” over the coming years.

Mr Zuckerberg said the company plans to have 10 million headsets active over the next few years so that the company can create a “self-sustaining” ecosystem with Facebook pledging to make them more affordable and more portable.

He also said that the current form factor of the VR headsets were “a little bit clunky” currently.

“AR is just going to be a lot harder. I really don’t think that AR is going to be good until you get normal-looking glasses that can project holograms into the world,” he said.

“And now, glasses range from thin to pretty thick frames. I don’t think we’re anywhere near getting all the electronics that you would need to get into a thin frame. But the hope would be that you can get it into more normal-looking glasses in the first part of this decade or the first half of this decade.”

The Facebook boss said that the “biggest shortcut” companies are taking in AR was not trying to do full holograms in the world and instead provide heads up information, like notifications.

He said he called that “putting an Apple Watch on your face”.

“Delivering a sense of presence is the thing that I care about. And VR and AR are going to be the technologies that do that. VR by fully immersing you in a new environment, and AR by bringing people into your existing environment through holograms,” he said in the Verge interview.

“So in the future, instead of a video chat, I’ll just be sitting on my couch and your hologram can just appear on the couch next to me, or I can hologram into your house.”

He also said it would be “a lot better than video chat” as users will be able to interact with virtual objects together like playing cards.