04 Nov 2015
Facebook is dabbling in a ‘teleportation’ station set to launch by 2025
Facebook is dabbling in a ‘teleportation’ station set to launch by 2025
There’s not a nerd among us that hasn’t dreamed about the implications of teleportation on our lives. According to Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer, at press event this morning before the Dublin Web Summit, he wants to make that a reality by 2025.
Kinda.
“Facebook wants to build a device that allows you to be anywhere you want, with anyone, regardless of geographic boundaries,” said Schroepfer.
After the purchase of Oculus Rift, it’s only natural that Facebook attempt to find vertical niches (outside of gaming) that could make use of its $2 billion acquisition.
Teleportation, or at least simulated teleportation, seems like a natural fit.
The idea, according to Schroepfer, is to trick your senses into believing the virtual world is real.
That’s the challenging part.
Creating beautiful worlds in a VR headset isn’t difficult. Getting the user to believe they’re part of it is another story altogether.
Movement, real-time feedback and lifelike interactions with virtual objects and people — mimicking a real world environment — aren’t easy problems to solve, but Facebook believes that Oculus Touch controllers (expected in Q2 2016) could ease some of the burden.
Another hurdle is content creation. What good is teleportation if the world you hope to teleport to doesn’t exist?
To help ease some of those concerns, Facebook has at least talked to film studios about making this a reality. Oculus is taking a different path. It hopes to make it easy for users to create their own environments after a purchase of Surreal Vision earlier this year.
The Surreal Vision team is working on early-stage prototypes that model the world and reconstruct it inside your virtual reality headset. The implications of this are nothing short of staggering.
Teleportation, in a sense, is on the horizon. The technical challenges, while very real, seem to be surmountable with time, research and a few key acquisitions by Facebook in the near future.
I, for one, can’t wait to have a cup of coffee with friends in all corners of the globe.
malikmuddser