Facebook F8 Day 2: 10 Year Roadmap For VR/AR, Wireless, Brain Interfaces And Open-Sourced AI

Yesterday marked the last day of F8 2017, Facebook’s annual developer conference, which I’ve been attending the last several days in San Jose (my rundown of Day 1 is here). Attendance for Day 2 was considerably down from Day 1, but I certainly wasn’t complaining—no line to get into the keynote and it wasn’t raining.

 I was a little disappointed in the overall lack of significant hardware news from the Day 2 keynote like some sort of Amazon.com Echo/Dot or Google Home knock-off. There was some hardware and some very pleasant surprises towards the end that made it worth my while as it provided insights to where Facebook is headed. And why they're headed there. Here’s my rundown of the keynote with some points of analysis and opinion.

 

Improving the “360 experience”

Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer kicked off Day 2’s keynote by referencing Facebook’s 10-year “roadmap” and setting the agenda for the day—a deeper dive into the three main areas Facebook is focusing on in the coming decade: connectivity, AI, and AR/VR. To be clear, this isn’t a real product development roadmap, but more of a directional statement of vision.

Schroepfer proceeded to introduce two new 360 camera designs—the x24, and the fun-sized version, x6. With 6DoF capabilities (6 degrees of freedom, for the uninitiated) Facebook claims these cameras will provide “some of the most immersive and engaging content” ever shot for VR purposes. The 6DoF is interesting as it adds the element of depth to VR video. I saw some cool demos from Intel at CES 2017 using HypeVR that enables you to look around objects and it blew me away. Anshel Sag got up close and personal with the new cameras and will be doing a deeper dive later next week.

Schropefer also introduced the 360 Capture SDK, which allows developers and hence the developer's users users to capture their own custom VR experiences through 360 photos and videos, and then upload it to a VR headset, or their own Facebook News Feed. 

These feature additions are smart as it leverages community in a way that sharing regular photos today can for non-360 folks. Facebook with YouTube is a leader in being the first to allow users to share VR videos today and I just started doing it with my new Gear 360 camera.

The other bit of “360” news, is that Facebook has developed three new AI techniques that purportedly will improve the resolution of 360 captures—AI view prediction, gravitational view prediction, and content-dependent streaming technology for non-VR devices.

 By using these techniques to predict where exactly to focus the highest concentration of pixels, which Facebook claims will improve VR experiences under difficult network conditions. This is important stuff and the more quickly you can do these VR tricks, the faster the industry will get to a killer experience. We aren't there now.

Why is VR and 360 so important to Facebook? Two reasons. VR is a new platform where new eyeballs and new ad units will be. Facebook doesn’t want to get caught off-guard again like when they went public and they were criticized for their reliance on “desktop.” Remember that? It took them a year and they did a masterful job going “mobile”. 

VR is a new advertising platform and they need to be there. Finally, VR is also a new paid content unit. As Netflix did a judo move on Blockbuster, why can’t Facebook do the same to Netflix with VR games and movies?