Monday, 02 June 2014 13:23

Samsung teams up with Facebook for VR

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After the purchase of Oculus VR for a cool $2 Billion many people wondered what Facebook was up to. The purchase did not seem to make any sense. However, if you looked closely at some of Facebook’s other purchases and also where many big players in the market were heading it made a lot of sense. Facebook wanted to enter the world of augmented reality and had plans for a social game with an immersive user experience. Oculus VR was almost tailor made for what they wanted to do.

Of course Facebook was (and is) not the only company interested in augmented or virtual reality. You have Sony, Microsoft and Samsung all working on projects involving one of these two technologies. Sony and Microsoft are building their own flavors of VR while Samsung opted for a much faster route.

They have agreed to work with Facebook to get a piece of the VR pie from their new toy. Samsung is getting access to the Oculus software, SDKs and other technologies that will help them take the fast track and possibly leapfrog Microsoft and Sony. In return Facebook is getting access to some very cool OLED panels with 2k and perhaps 4k resolutions. We imagine that Samsung could also end up assisting Facebook in their goal of pushing out their social VR world.

The problem facing both companies is that, much like 3D, VR is still not an attention grabber for many people. Although most will agree it is very cool technology they are not likely to spend their money getting it. Even in the hands of Facebook we have our doubts about consumer acceptance of this new technology. I guess we will all have to wait and see.

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Read 2526 times Last modified on Monday, 02 June 2014 13:28

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