Facebook’s VR Project Might Blur The Lines Of Reality

Anyone who’s ever played a video game is accustomed to designing their own character. You might make an avatar that looks exactly like you, or you might make something infused with fantasy elements, but the basic process is the same. Once that’s done, you’re free to pilot your avatar into your game and interact either with computer-generated characters or other players, each of whom has their own avatar. It’s not a new idea – it’s been around since the 1990s and will sound especially familiar to anyone who ever spent any time in “Second Life.” Telling the difference between reality and your virtual environment in “Second Life” or any other video game isn’t difficult at the moment because the computer-generated avatars are so obviously computer-generated. If Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have their way, that might soon change. Facebook’s mammoth VR department is currently working on creating “realistic” avatars for Facebook users and might be ready to deploy them sooner than we all imagine. The company is hard at work right now on VR and augmented reality that makes use of the Oculus VR headset, and it’s apparently making rapid progress.