Facebook is creating a “metaverse,” which allows for digital worlds that several people can share simultaneously, and it is in the process of setting up a team for the project, CNBC reported.
Facebook Vice President of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) Andrew Bosworth said the metaverse team would be under the umbrella of Facebook’s VR group, Reality Labs, according to CNBC.
“Today Portal and Oculus can teleport you into a room with another person, regardless of physical distance, or to new virtual worlds and experiences,” Bosworth wrote in a Facebook post. “But to achieve our full vision of the Metaverse, we also need to build the connective tissue between these spaces — so you can remove the limitations of physics and move between them with the same ease as moving from one room in your home to the next.”
The idea of making a metaverse has been discussed before by tech companies. CNBC described the idea as a successor technology to smartphones and the internet.
A metaverse, according to experts, is often considered a “virtual world” in which large numbers of people can gather, work and socialize, CNBC reported. It’s been related to the VR and AR tech that big companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, in addition to Facebook, are working on.
Earlier this month, Facebook fully launched its cloud-based gaming platform to most Americans. The service had been tested starting in October.
Jason Rubin, the social media giant’s vice president of Play, said the idea is to build up the company’s repertoire of free-to-play games that users can enjoy.
“People play our cloud-streamed games right alongside games in HTML5,” Rubin said. “And they shouldn’t have to think too hard about how the games are delivered so long as we do our jobs right.”
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