Barcelona: Mobile World Congress 2016 Monday, 22. Febr. 2016

[Queen Esther]

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/technik-motor/mark-zuckerbergs-vision-von-virtueller-realitaet-auf-mwc-14084393.html

Mark Zuckerberg touts 360 video and social VR in Barcelona: Mobile World Congress 2016

Attendees watch virtual reality content in Gear VR headsets at a Samsung event in Barcelona on Feb. 21, 2016.

 

 Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, speaks at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Feb. 22, 2016.

 The Gear VR is based on technology from Oculus, a virtual reality company Facebook acquired in 2014 for $2 billion. At the time, some questioned Facebook’s purchase of Oculus, but now the reason for it is clear.

“VR is the next platform, where anyone can create and experience anything they want,” said Zuckerberg. “Pretty soon, we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the power to share and experience whole scenes as if you’re just right there in person.”

Virtual reality relies on 360-degree videos that capture a scene from all angles. It requires a camera with two or more lenses and software that stitches the video or still images together. That’s what Samsung’s Gear 360 does. Earlier in the day, LG Electronics announced a similar 360-degree camera.

For viewers, similar software is required to make sense of the video and play it either on a conventional screen, where viewers can move the video to look around, or on a virtual reality headset, where they move their heads to look around.

 Facebook added support for such video last year and Zuckerberg said there are already 20,000 360-degree videos on on Facebook.

“We’ve only just started to explore what’s possible with video and VR,” he said. “It’s still really early.”

To help push the technology forward, Facebook recently formed a number of engineering teams to create new social VR applications, he said.

The rise of VR is very much one of modern technology.

Scientists have been experimenting with VR for years, but it’s only been in the last couple of years that computing and telecommunications has gotten to the stage where it’s possible to do in good quality on reasonable hardware and networks.

But more work is needed.

“One day soon, all of us will have the power to broadcast live,” he said. “To do that, we’re going to have to solve a lot of really complex engineering problems.”

Zuckerberg credited Samsung for helping come up with some of the hardware components required. He said engineers at Oculus and Facebook are also working on reducing network-related challenges.

One recent innovation involves streaming just the part of the video being viewed rather than the entire 360-degree view. That’s helped engineers realize a 4x increase in the quality of video while reducing bandwidth consumption by three-quarters, he said.

Zuckerberg said Facebook and Oculus are committed to  VR  “for the long term” and new VR games are among the new  experiences coming this year.   Mark Zuckerberg says  VR is the future of Facebook.

 For a teenage Mark Zuckerberg, high school mathematics class meant dreams of traveling to distant worlds through virtual reality. Those ideas stayed with him as he grew Facebook into the mammoth it’s become today, and they’re now guiding him as he ponders the future of the social media platform.

It will be immersive, it will be bring people closer together, and it will happen sooner than you might think, he said on Sunday in Barcelona.

“I’ve been waiting for the day to come when we can deliver this experience,” he said. “Today, this is now possible. That day is here.”

Zuckerberg was speaking at a Samsung event held to launch two new smartphones and where the South Korean company also unveiled a new 360-degree still and video camera called the Gear 360.

The two companies started working together last year, and in November Samsung launched the $99 Gear VR headset. Users clip in a compatible Samsung Galaxy smartphone to be able to take virtual adventures.

BY  ORDER  A  NEW  SAMSUNG  VERY  FAST  -  I  READ,  IN  GERMANY  THEY  GET  THE  $ 99  GEAR VR  HEADSET  FOR  FREE !!

At Mobile World Congress today we announced the Telecom Infra Project, part of our efforts to connect the world through Internet.org.

Internet.org is made up of many separate programs, including a few focused on developing new types of infrastructure to connect people in the world's most remote communities. Through ideas like solar-powered aircraft and satellites that can beam down internet through lasers, and community wi-fi hotspots, we can reach communities that are difficult or expensive to reach with traditional infrastructure.

Today we’re taking the next step by partnering with telecom companies to develop new technologies that will reduce the cost of building mobile networks all over the world.

Our inspiration for this initiative is the Open Compute Project, an effort launched by Facebook in 2011 where we open sourced our server, network and data centers designs to promote collaboration that has led to faster innovation and billions of dollars in efficiency savings across the industry. This new effort will follow the same principles of open technology design and collaboration, and we hope the cost savings from greater efficiency will be passed along to people by making their data plans cheaper and making it affordable for operators to extend their networks to places it hasn't traditionally been cost effective to do so. In this way, TIP will help us connect the world much faster.

Facebook is working with more than 30 partners including Deutsche Telekom, Intel, Nokia and SK Telecom to develop new technologies that can help connect people faster and more efficiently, from infrastructure that can help connect the unconnected in developing countries to ways to accelerate the growth of 5G networks -- which will deliver richer forms of content like video and VR.

I'm looking forward to discussing the new Telecom Infra Project as well as the other different programs of Internet.org  later today at my fireside chat at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

 

 

 

[Queen Esther]

Tomorrow  I  will  try  post  that  in  German  too...  for  our  German  members !

[Queen Esther]

PS.  By  SATURN  it does give the Gear VR headset for FREE,  when you buy the new SAMSUNG  Smartphone. I heard that in the TV NEWS !