(Bloomberg) — Facebook Inc. is trying to make virtual reality feel more like home, part of a sweeping plan to bring the immersive technology to a broader swath of users.
At its Connect conference on Thursday, the social media giant unveiled Horizon Home, an addition to the Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality headset. The new feature will let users interact as digital avatars in virtual homes created through Facebook’s VR system, where they can also watch videos or play games together, the company said. In the future, people will be able to customize their digital homes.
At the event, where executives are showing off innovations in augmented and virtual reality, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is also expected to announce a new name for the world’s largest social media company, according to a report last week from tech news website The Verge.
In a demonstration, Zuckerberg displayed a virtual avatar of himself dressed identically in jeans and a black long-sleeve shirt. The CEO said people will “probably have” multiple avatars for work, home and gaming. During the demo, Zuckerberg took a call from his wife, Priscilla, on a watch device.
“All right, so that’s a glimpse,” he said. “It’s a ways off, but you can start to see some of the fundamental building blocks.”
The presentation included an announcement that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the popular game from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., is in development for the Oculus Quest 2.
Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, also said it will test a program that lets users log on to the Quest 2 VR goggles with special work accounts instead of via their personal Facebook accounts, through a new service called Quest for Business. And it’s releasing a high-end headset next year called Cambria.
“The goal that we’ve had is to continue to develop new use cases beyond just gaming that make VR something that people use in multiple areas of their lives,” Andrew Bosworth, who leads Facebook Reality Labs, said in a briefing earlier this week.
Within the next decade, Zuckerberg said Facebook expects the metaverse to reach a billion people and “host hundreds of millions of dollars of digital commerce.”
Zuckerberg tried to position the metaverse as the future of e-commerce and said it would bring wide benefits to society and the economy. Specifically, he said Horizon’s ability to hold virtual meetings could potentially reduce air traffic. And the metaverse will have privacy and parental controls, the company said.
Other new VR tools introduced on Thursday, to be ready in the coming months or next year, include new fitness apps and accessories and the ability to invite Facebook friends to join Messenger calls via VR. At the conference, Facebook also said it’s investing in capabilities that will let developers build new experiences that blend real and virtual worlds on the Quest platform. And the company announced a $150 million education program to increase training and partnership opportunities for AR and VR creators.
Facebook is bulking up virtual-reality offerings while building out the immersive digital worlds it calls the metaverse. The company has been investing in VR- and AR-powered products because it envisions them as the next major platform for human communication, after mobile phones.
“Even though this sounds like science fiction, we’re starting to see a lot of these technologies come together,” Zuckerberg said. He gave a rough “five to 10” years time-frame for their broader use.
Building out the metaverse will also allow Facebook to reduce its dependency on mobile operating-system and browser makers such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Apple Inc. to deliver services to consumers.
“This isn’t about spending more time on screens,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s about spending the time that we already spend better.”
On Thursday morning, Facebook added fuel to speculation that it may announce a name change by wrapping up the sign in front of its headquarters.
The well-known “like” sign outside its offices in Menlo Park was covered in a temporary canvas that also had the thumbs-up symbol. At around 7 a.m. local time, a security barrier was added and guards patrolled the area around it.
(Updates with more from presentation starting in sixth paragraph.)
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