Facebook’s Oculus VR division has launched the Oculus Venues social VR app for watching live events. Oculus Venues delivers the experience of being at a live sporting event, and enables people to connect to watch concerts, sports, stand-up comedy, movies, all live and in real time.
Events running between now and the end of August include live football and baseball games, live comedy and even movies.
The experience promises live events 'from the best seat in the house'.
Oculus recently demonstrated Venues to a group of journalists to watch a VR screening of a basketball game. Participants had to create an Oculus avatars first, and were then transported directly into a dedicated VR seating section of a sports arena, with direct view of the action. Once the game had begun viewers could watch the game surrounded by roughly 30-40 avatars, and talk to them via voice chat. As in real life, participants could overhear the conversations of people sitting next to them, but unlike a live event you could switch seats to somewhere else in the venue and adjust the audio of the game.
The goal of the app is to make VR more of a social experience, and introduce communication and interaction.