Oculus VR, the virtual reality company owned by Facebook, released an app called the Oculus Social alpha. It's for users of the Samsung Gear VR virtual reality headset, which uses a Samsung phone as the screen and brains of the headset and is based on Oculus technology and its taking over social media
Oculus Social is, for now, a virtual reality movie-watching app. The experience is that you choose an avatar to represent yourself, and then you suddenly show up in a kind of small movie theater, sitting in one of the seats. You can watch a video from Twitch or a preselected video from Vimeo and, if you want to, chat with up to four other people who are also in the theater and are also represented by avatars.
In the current version, there are no avatar bodies. Just heads floating above the seats. As the real-life users talk, nod or turn their heads, so do their avatars. Stereo sound bolsters the illusion of presence by making the sound of the movie come from the screen, but the sound of users talking comes from the avatars.
That experience may sound boring and, as virtual reality applications go, it's rudimentary. But it's a major milestone: It's the first social experience ever provided for an Oculus VR-based platform.
It's very basic but pregnant with culture-shifting possibility in the same way those first, and now old, Nokia cellphones used to be.Next year is going to be the Year of Virtual Reality. The Oculus Rift platform is expected to ship in the first quarter of 2016. The enterprise version of Microsoft's Hololens should also emerge some time next year. Google's Cardboard platform, an open-source way for any company to make inexpensive VR headsets that can be used with a smartphone, should finally gain mainstream traction. And many other hardware, software and VR content productsshould become available for consumers.
The public thinks the big VR app will be gaming. But I think it will be social interaction. That's why the appearance of the Oculus Social alpha is significant. It's a milestone as important as when the first smartphone came out -- a first product in its category that will completely change how humans interact with one another
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