SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the social network has ambitions in augmented reality, not just virtual reality.
Speaking Wednesday at Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit, Zuckerberg was asked if the company was working on augmented reality. "Yeah," he said, adding that "it's a bit farther out."
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While virtual reality promises a fully immersive experience, augmented reality provides a layer of digital information overlaid onto what you are seeing (like the experience offered by Microsoft's HoloLens.)
"Augmented reality will be here but it's a long road to get there," said Michael Abrash, chief scientist of Oculus VR, who was on the panel with Zuckerberg. The challenge with AR, Abrash said, is that it's more difficult to present it in a consumer friendly format.
$FB's Abrash says augmented reality is much harder than VR. World changes & gear must be comfy, powerful & socially acceptable. #VFSummit— Deepa Seetharaman (@dseetharaman) October 7, 2015
Michael Abrash: In 20 years you'll have glasses/contacts on and be able to use augmented reality or virtual reality as you choose #VFSummit— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) October 7, 2015
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Zuckerberg spoke at length about the opportunity of virtual reality for Facebook. "Every 10 or 15 years there's a new computing platform," he said. "Mobile is the first platform that's really natural, but it's not the end of the line."
"The 250 million people who own an Xbox, PlayStation, or wii will likely be the first VR adopters."-Zuckerberg #VFSummit— George Roche (@GeorgeRoche22) October 7, 2015
Echoing comments made by Facebook's engineering head last month, Zuckerberg said the web has evolved from a text based platform to photos and video and that virtual reality is the next step.
The company unveiled the consumer-ready version of the Rift earlier this year. It will come with an Xbox One controller but the company is also working on its own controller called Oculus Touch. Still in a prototype stage, the controllers will allow people grab and manipulate things inside virtual reality.