Facebook’s annual developers’ conference F8 2017 began amid excitement and anticipation at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. The two-day event was attended by more than 4,000 attendees, who bore witness to some of the most astonishing and rather mind-boggling technologies that the social media giant unveiled at the event.
Though we have gotten used to Facebook’s day dreaming (read: virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)) by now, yet the company didn’t fail to stupefy us, leaving everyone aww-ing in admiration. Of Course, tech giants like Google and Apple have been working on some mind-blowing technologies themselves, but F8 just proved how Facebook is leagues ahead of its (potential) competition.
The powerful VR and AR tools that the company unveiled at F8 also give us a glimpse of the company’s decade-long masterplan.
Meanwhile, here are the five key takeaways from F8 2017:
Facebook Spaces
Are you bored of hanging out at same old boring places with your friends? Well, worry not as now you can hang out in the cool new virtual world that Facebook has designed for you. Confused? Meet Facebook Spaces, a VR app that lets you travel to distant places and interact with your friends in a virtual environment. You can draw in the air, take a trip with your friends to Mars, and just hang out with your friends over a cup of coffee (or maybe beer). But that’s not even the coolest thing about it. You can call a friend in the real world and take selfies in the virtual world with this cool app that you can download from the Oculus store.
Messenger 2.0
When Facebook first launched Messenger back in 2011, never had we imagined that it would grow from a simple messaging app to a full-blown platform of its own. At F8 2017, Facebook introduced Messenger 2.0, that not helps you to chat with friends, but also with businesses and share their experience. But that’s not it, you can also order food online and pay for the same using Messenger. Messenger also helps you to check out events happening near you all without leaving the app. To put it simply, you can order food from McD and check out the concert happening near you, all without leaving the app.
ALSO READ: Facebook’s latest 360-degree VR camera has 24 inbuilt smaller cameras
360-degree VR camera
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think or virtual reality? Probably VR gears that accompany high-end smartphone these days? Well, it’s time you unlearn what you know and take a trip down the VR lane with Facebook’s new 360-degree VR camera that packs 24 cameras in one giant camera that looks like a football. x24 packs 24 cameras in one to give you a fully immersive VR experience. Its younger brother x6, on the other hand, packs six cameras in one unit and seems like a mini VR camera on the go. The best part about the two cameras is that the environment isn’t still and you actually feel as if you are a part of the video.
ALSO READ: Facebook telepathy tools will soon get us to ‘type with our brains’ and ‘hear with our skin’
Sensors that can help us type with brain
Admittedly, this seems straight out of a Frankenstein movie but won’t it be pretty cool if thoughts were enough to help us type? Well, Facebook is working on developing powerful sensors that decode signals from our brain and type at a speed of 100 words in a minute and that too without cutting out a piece of your skull. Eventually, the company want to turn it into wearable technology that can be manufactured at a large scale.
ALSO READ: Facebook F8 2017: Camera, Messenger 2.0 and more. All you need to know
Sensors that can help us hear with skin
Up until now, we have studied that our skin helps us to feel (if an object is hot or etc), but never has anyone in the history of mankind ever imagined that skin would someday be used for listening (that’s right!). But Facebook is making that happen (in coming 4-5 years though). “We are building the hardware and software necessary to deliver language through the skin,” the social media giant revealed in a press release.
Tether-Tenna
To some it may seem like the name of a Greek goddess but in reality it is a new kind of ‘insta-infrastructure’ wherein a small helicopter that is connected to a wire can be deployed to restore connectivity in case of emergency. To put it simply, its a drone that can restore network connectivity.
Now that we know what Facebook is up to, we can comfortably sit back in our chairs and wait for the company to transform our reality!
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