Facebook’s Oculus to start selling hand controllers

During the last Oculus conference, Mike Schroepfer, the CTO of Facebook, along with Michael Booth, who is part of the newly reformed Facebook virtual reality team donned a pair of Oculus Touch, as well as Oculus rift and provided a demo to how it would work.

Mark Zuckerberg wants you to start using virtual reality to look at your Facebook photos, share videos and comment on your mates’ status.

At the Oculus Connect 3 event in San Jose, California, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be investing another $250 million in Oculus’ developer community. Shipping problems and a higher-than-expected price bungled the launch. This can be seen in a demonstration video which depicts a man putting on the headset and walking around untethered in a virtual environment. Like this one from Epic, called Robo Recall. Virtual reality fans have been waiting for Facebook to roll out an app for the Oculus platform since it acquired the company for $2 Billion in 2014. Zuckberg, in avatar form, then took a selfie with his wife inside the Facebook Messenger window. Although it will be cheaper than the Oculus VR headsets it will not be that powerful when compared to other VR headsets. Not only was there controversy regarding its $599 launch price, which some felt wasn’t in line with the company’s previous messaging about price, but Oculus also suggested that the full price tag (including the computer to run it) was $1,500.

Oculus plans to expand its mobile ecosystem.

The company is working on a bunch of VR software platforms for both entertainments, education other areas.

“In the long run, we are bullish on stand-alone”, Cohen said. “You feel like you’re really there in another place with people”. He also mentioned that Virtual Reality is the flawless platform where the people can be put first because of the aspect of presence.

Other notable announcements at the event were Oculus Parties and Oculus Rooms.

Speaking at the conference the company revealed it and Facebook, which owns Oculus, would be donating $10 million to diversity initiatives. Luckey recently made a public apology for donating $10,000 to a political group that boasted of creating negative social media posts about Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton.

So while the current Oculus Rift can hook-up to a PC for more processing power and the Samsung Gear VR is limited by the smartphone running it, this Santa Cruz should find a happy medium.