By Michael Liedtke, Technology Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg seems to be realizing a sobering reality about virtual reality: His company's Oculus headsets that send people into artificial worlds are too expensive and confining to appeal to the masses.
Zuckerberg on Wednesday revealed how Facebook intends to address that problem, unveiling a stand-alone headset that won't require plugging in a smartphone or a cord tethering it to a personal computer like the Oculus Rift headset does.
"I am more committed than ever to the future of virtual reality," Zuckerberg reassured a crowd of computer programmers gathered in San Jose, California, for Oculus' annual conference.
Facebook's new headset, called Oculus Go, will cost $199 when it hits the market next year. That's a big drop from the Rift, which originally sold for $599 and required a PC costing at least $500 to become immersed in virtual reality, or VR.
Recent discounts lowered the Rift's price to $399 at various times during the summer, a markdown Oculus now says will be permanent.
"The strategy for Facebook is to make the onboarding to VR as easy and inexpensive as possible," said Gartner analyst Brian Blau. "And $199 is an inexpensive entry for a lot of people who are just starting out in VR. The problem is you will be spending that money on a device that only does VR and nothing else."
Facebook didn't provide any details on how the Oculus Go will work, but said it will include built-in headphones for audio and have a LCD display.
The Oculus Go will straddle the market between the Rift and the Samsung Gear, a $129 headset that runs on some of Samsung's higher-priced phones. It will be able to run the same VR as the Samsung Gear, leading Blau to conclude the Go will rely on the same Android operating system as the Gear and likely include similar processors as Samsung phones.
The Gear competes against other headsets, such as Google's $99 Daydream View, that require a smartphone. Google is also working on a stand-alone headset that won't require a phone, but hasn't specified when that device will be released or how much it will cost.
Zuckerberg promised the Oculus Go will be "the most accessible VR experience ever," and help realize his new goal of having 1 billion people dwelling in virtual reality at some point in the future.
Facebook and other major technology companies such as Google and Microsoft that are betting on VR have a long way to go.
About 16 million head-mounted display devices were shipped in 2016, a number expected to rise to 22 million this year, according to the research firm Gartner Inc. Those figures include headsets for what is known as augmented reality.
Zuckerberg, though, remains convinced that VR will evolve into a technology that reshapes the way people interact and experience life, much like Facebook's social networks and smartphones already have. His visions carry weight, largely because Facebook now has more than 2 billion users and plays an influential role in how people communicate.
But VR so far has been embraced mostly by video game lovers, despite Facebook's efforts to bring the technology into the mainstream since buying Oculus for $2 billion three years ago.
Facebook has shaken up Oculus management team since then in a series of moves that included the departure of founder Palmer Luckey earlier this year.
Former Google executive Hugo Barra now oversees Facebook's VR operations.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More