Facebook’s Annual F8 Developer Conference: Virtual and Augmented Reality, Messenger Bots and More

calendar Updated September 25, 2023
Maryna Stavnycha
Marketing Manager
Facebook’s Annual F8 Developer Conference: Virtual and Augmented Reality, Messenger Bots and More

This year, on the Facebook F8 event the company shared its vision for the future of augmented reality apps, VR, Messenger bots and more. Follow along to keep updated on the most recent trends from Facebook.

Ambitious New Augmented Reality

According to the Facebook’s grand 10-year roadmap that was unveiled in 2016, the company intends to turn virtual and augmented reality into forward-looking parts of its business over the coming decade.

Facebook 10 year roadmap

To speed up this growth of the AR technology, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg presented the AR Studio Facebook that will allow developers to create augmented-reality effects for the FB app’s camera. Facebook opens up a developer platform so that people can create augmented reality apps for the cameras that live inside Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Whatsapp.

Initially, the effects will be relatively basic and will act similarly to Snapchat lenses. But in their plans for the future, Facebook is intended to use custom AR to show, for example, the restaurant’s menu, virtual steam that rises above a real coffee cup, 3D drawings on empty walls and more.

Source: Facebook for Developers

In his presentation, Zuckerberg showed a variety of stunning camera effects, which users will soon find on Facebook. These will extend beyond the traditional art frames and face filters of today to include three-dimensional text and images.

AR Studio Facebook Camera Effects

Zuckerberg called AR the next major computing platform, a sentiment that was supported by Tim Cook and other tech executives.

Facebook Spaces

At F8 the tech giant revealed Facebook Spaces in beta today on Oculus Rift + Touch. Spaces – is a virtual reality application that lets you connect remotely up to four FB friends and engage with one another, hang out with in a new interactive way as if you were sitting next to each other.

This news means that everybody who has Rift and Touch controllers can connect to other people on a virtual platform, where they can watch videos, take photos, and participate in a various VR activities together.

Augmented Reality

Spaces was first boasted at the Oculus Connect conference in October, and Spaces, as it exists today, is not so different from the demonstration that Zuckerberg showed off.

Source: Facebook for Developers

Most notable in this release is that Spaces will soon be expanding to other VR platforms in addition to Oculus Rift.

Messenger Platform 2.0 – Your One Stop Shop for Work, Play and Social

Messenger CEO David Marcus introduced Messenger Platform 2.0, a new range of tools, from public QR codes that link to bots, to group chats that incorporate these bots.

With 1.2 billion users on Facebook Messenger, there are plenty of people who could try their bots. Read our article Messenger Platform 2.0 Debuts at F8 to discover the latest updates.

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