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Facebook's mission is to connect the world, so it only makes sense that all of its products are going to have a social element. Today, during the keynotes of Facebook's developer conference F8, the company's CTO Mike Schroepfer jumped into an Oculus Rift VR headset and interacted with another Facebook employee back on their campus. Oculus is owned by Facebook, and recently launched to consumers late last month. The two were able to hang out in cyberspace because of a coming functionality to Oculus Rift called [...]

Most hoverboards aren't. The iconic technology "Back To The Future Part II" imagined as commonplace in 2015 has lent its name to everything from a motorized hands-free Segway to a Lexus-made tiny hovering maglev train. The real world allows for a lot of strange flying contraptions, but none that quite match the fictional grace of Marty McFly's preferred getaway vehicle. Fortunately, that’s something we can do in virtual reality. Like an arcane cyberpunk set-up, this virtual hoverboard is generated through a hodge-podge of external sensors and displays. Amsterdam developer Sander Sneek’s [...]

EyeNetra, a startup that has created technology to develop inexpensive, smartphone-based vision tests, is in talks with virtual reality companies to make screens that can cater to users' specific vision requirements. The development could improve virtual reality headsets, making them more efficient and user-friendly, according to a press release from MIT News. Virtual reality screens differ from those, say, on your smartphone or computer because they take advantage of how our eyes perceive depth to trick your brain into thinking you're seeing in 3D. Your brain [...]

If you've ever visited London's Globe Theater--or seen pictures of it--and wondered what it must have been like in Shakespeare's time, you no longer need a time machine. Florida International University in Miami has built a virtual-reality facility called the I-CAVE (Integrated Computer Augmented Virtual Environment), which will serve as a center for research in 3D modeling and new ways of presenting educational tools. And the first installment for I-CAVE is a virtual reality experience that recreates the Globe Theater as it would have appeared in [...]

Of all the people to offer congratulations in the wake of Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo winning its third victory in the board game Go last night, overcoming human world champion Lee Se-dol (and thereby ensuring the A.I.'s victory in the five-game series, no matter the outcome of the remaining two games), Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg might not be the first to come to mind. Yet that's exactly what Zuckerberg did earlier today, writing on his Facebook page: Congrats to the Google DeepMind team on this [...]

At its best, virtual reality is transportative: It will let you scale a simulated cliff face, or come face-to-teeth with a T-rex. You can have those experiences from your living room, but of course, you need a virtual reality headset, and for that, you have two broad categories to choose from—a low-end contraption that uses your smartphone, or a fancy rig that requires a PC. But on Wednesday, Zuckerberg and Facebook-owned Oculus announced a new headset designed to fill that gap between the cheap and the [...]

Virtual reality is a gateway to powerful experiences. Strap on a pair of VR goggles, look around, and the scene you see will adjust, in real time, to match your gaze. But the technology is a visual one. Virtual reality doesn't include touch, although there are controllers that provide "hand presence," allowing you to manipulate objects in the virtual world, or shoot a simulated gun. So while VR today could simulate a Westworld-like setting, you're not going to be actually feeling the hug of a cowboy-robot [...]