The feature extends Spaces by making it more social. Previously, only people with a virtual reality headset could participate in your virtual world.
The addition of Facebook Live support lets you stream what you’re seeing in your headset to your friends on Facebook. They can watch as you interact in the virtual world and contribute with reactions and comments. You can monitor the stream using a “smartphone” interface within Spaces. It lets you see how many friends are watching and check what’s being streaming.
Facebook Live in Spaces
Facebook
Enabling Live in Spaces adds a virtual camera to the scene. You can position it wherever you want and then start streaming its feed to your friends. This lets you detach yourself from the camera, focusing it on the world instead of yourself. By moving the camera position, you can show the actions of other participants in the world or temporarily leave the virtual reality space if you need to.
Facebook said that merging its existing Live livestreaming platform with Spaces creates an “immediate and interactive” way to communicate online. Spaces users can now show all their friends the events in their virtual worlds. It can also be presumed that Facebook’s hoping it can draw more users into Spaces by giving them a new window into the VR app.
Facebook Live in Spaces
Facebook / Newsroom
“Facebook Live is already one of the most immediate and interactive ways to share moments with friends. By going live from Facebook Spaces, you can share a whole new kind of moment with friends and family directly from VR,” said Facebook.
“Whether you’re touring exotic locations across the globe in 360, collaborating on a virtual marker masterpiece, or riffing on a rival video, the people who matter most to you can now follow along in real time on Facebook.”
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Facebook Spaces is available now on the Oculus Store in beta form. Facebook’s continuing to develop the fledgling app as it starts to work out how people actually want to use Facebook in virtual reality.
It’s still got several challenges to surmount before it convinces the sceptical public of VR’s benefits. First and foremost is the high price tag associated with VR headsets – the Oculus Rift is currently on sale at “only” $399, a sizeable investment to access an app that’s still figuring out how it should work.
