Facebook recently launched the first beta version of their new VR initiative called Facebook Spaces. As demonstrated in a short trailer posted by Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg, and in a demonstration from October of last year, Facebook Spaces allows users to connect with one another using the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset to communicate, create, and consume content. The VR app gives some indication of the direction that the social media company plans to take following its somewhat unexpected purchase of the VR headset manufacturer Oculus for two billion dollars in 2014.
With Facebook Spaces, the social media giant is attempting to introduce a new way to leverage cutting-edge VR technology to allow users to interact with one another from a distance in a way that feels natural and comfortable. As the Oculus Rift tracks the position of its users’ heads and hands, their body movements are represented in the virtual reality environment by an avatar, whose appearance and expressions can be customized. In the VR space, users can modify their environment on a whim, selecting from a variety of locations and using 360 degree videos as a backdrop; they can spawn props, such as playing cards and a chess board, with taking on the properties of physical objects and can be interacted with; and they can even answer video calls, creating a blend between the real world and virtual reality. Users can also draw in mid-air with a brush tool to create doodles, which can be interacted with like other props, and consume content such as trailers for movies in the virtual company of their friends.
While these features certainly sound impressive, they are distinctly crude relative to the potential that VR has for impacting socialization
While these features certainly sound impressive, they are distinctly crude relative to the potential that VR has for impacting socialization. One of the app’s shortcomings is that the facial expressions produced by its cartoony avatars are severely limited compared to real-life interaction; because the Oculus Rift hardware is, as of yet, incapable of reading its users’ facial expressions, they must use a combination of hand gestures and button presses to make their avatars visibly emote. Even then, the range of expressions users can adopt is limited to simple emotions like confusion, laughter, and surprise. As a result, Mike Booth, the project manager for Social VR at Facebook, has noted that the app isn’t really appropriate for serious situations, such as giving somebody bad news. Despite the futuristic appeal of VR technology, alternative methods of interaction, such as video calls, are likely to be preferable for communicating serious matters or interacting in a way in which reading another person’s face is essential for the foreseeable future.
Despite the simple and cartoony aesthetic, however, Facebook Spaces and other social VR apps have an advantage over means of online interaction, which is that they are capable of delivering an enhanced feeling of presence. Many users of VR devices have reported that the experience of interacting with others in VR provides a level of immersion unmatched by other technologies, giving users an uncanny sense of being located in the same physical space as the person they’re interacting with. As such, Facebook Spaces and related technologies may end up being adopted mostly by people in long-distance relationships or between family members to give a sense of closeness to their online interactions.
Reactions to Facebook Spaces have been mixed, with some critics expressing excitement and fascination at the new technology, and other critics feeling off-put by the strangeness of the concept and its execution. Daniel Cooper of Engadget has commented, astutely, that despite the bells and whistles VR provides, Facebook Spaces provides little more than the 3D virtual social apps, such as Second Life, that have been around for years, and that the app doesn’t come anywhere close to replicating the experience of face-to-face interaction. And Harry McCracken of Fast Company opined that the application felt more like a theme-park ride than a real way to connect with others. One thing is for sure, however; though the technology is clearly in its infancy, it carries with it the potential to change the way we connect with one another.
Featured image via Pixabay
