Facebook gives demo of how its VR experience will look like

Facebook shelved out $2 billion for Oculus in 2014 and now the social network revealed how it plans to connect virtual reality to the Facebook ecosystem. Mark Zuckerberg gave a five-minute demonstration, showcasing how a cartoon-like version of yourself can interact with others in the Facebook VR experience. At the moment, facial expressions are still controlled via button presses, but Facebook hopes to achieve a similar effect via gestural tracking and voice analysis. A full writeup of the event can be read at ARS Technica.

The demo saw every chat room member interacting with a virtual smartwatch. That menu interface allowed chatters to bring up new virtual locales to stand in, share videos, take webcam calls from non-VR participants, and more. Zuckerberg and friends played a few simple games, including chess, cards, and sword fighting—and one of the chatters was able to draw his own sword, then immediately pick it up and fight with it. Zuckerberg later took a Facebook Messenger video call from his wife, who appeared as a giant screen that could be moved and scaled around the chat room. Zuckerberg eventually took a selfie inside the VR interface with his wife's video display (and he used a virtual selfie stick to take the shot). He immediately posted that selfie to his personal Facebook feed.