Mark Zuckerberg has long been an advocate of virtual reality (the vast sums he paid for Oculus will attest to that) and, after promising to integrate the technolgy more into Facebook for years, he has finally revealed the Facebook 360 VR app.
Powered by Oculus, the app is designed for the Samsung Gear VR and uses the 360-degree virtual reality media on Facebook. There are more than 25 million 360-degree photos and 1 million 360-degree videos on Facebook to date.
You can download the Facebook 360 app for Gear VR by opening the Oculus app on any Gear VR-compatible Samsung device and by search for Facebook 360. Or you can access it from the Oculus site.
With 360 cameras such as Nikon's KeyMission 360, to the GoPro 3D Hero System - the hardware for 3D media in social networks has already taken hold. But until now, there was no specific software application for exploring 3D feeds on Facebook. Modelled on Facebook's web and mobile versions, the app holds four main feeds: Explore, Following, Saved and Timeline. Through the Samsung Gear VR, you can catch up with posts from your friends, explore new content from companies or groups, as well as save your favourite posts.
However, the feature that really comes to life in 360 VR is Timeline. Following in the visual tradition of looking over old photographs, the app allows you to move into situations you’ve captured and shared before. According to Facebook, the app lets you "step into a moment and look all around you – at details you might have missed in the moment." This allows for a new level of interactivity.
In a statement released by Facebook, the company added that it designed the app to "connect with the people and things they care about, and [will] continue to improve the experience and hope to bring it to more platforms over time."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
