Gadgetory

facebook wants virtual reality to be more than just for games at the oculus connect conference Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off how live chat will work inside virtual reality with the oculus rift headset when you're in a VR chat the participants show up as cartoon avatars and you can give your avatar different expressions like happy or in shock or confused right now you would have to use a controller to change the expressions but in the future it may be able to animate automatically based on how you're speaking or your gestures the environment of the chat can be any video or photo you want the demo was bouncing between underwater seeing the surface of Mars the Facebook office and Zuckerberg home there's also some social fun built in like the ability to play cards or have your avatar hold different objects and if someone draws a weapon on you well just draw one of your own literally take a marker draw a sword and swing your doodle around you can also take a video call in VR and have the whole gang join in when Zuckerberg wife Priscilla Chan called in from her phone everyone could see her video and she was able to see into the virtual world there was even a virtual selfie taken and posted to Facebook in 2014 Facebook purchased oculus for 1 billion dollars before there was any product and now two years later we're seeing the social possibilities for VR the oculus rift requires a tethered connection to a high-end PC but Facebook wants to lower the cost of getting into VR by building a cheaper wireless headset the prototype is called Santa Cruz it's still in a very early testing phase it's a bit like microsoft's hololens which can track how your head moves in the world the company is also working with computer manufacturers to create a more affordable PC that can run virtual reality like a $500 computer and for those touch hand controllers well they're coming in December with pre-orders beginning October 10th for $200 also coming at the end of the year are $50 oculus earphones that's it for this segment is update I'm Bridget Carey stay on top of the biggest story cnet.com splash update