Going to the movies is undoubtedly one of the most pleasant social experiences. But that could change with the arrival of Oculus Cinema, a virtual theater you can visit with your friends by simply putting on an Oculus Rift headset without leaving home.
Oculus has just announced a new application for its virtual reality system called Oculus Cinema, a virtual cinema you can attend with your friends. Basically, this app recreates the feeling of being in a movie theater, sitting in front of a giant screen and enjoying the film, but from the comfort of your own home. Users of the Samsung Gear VR have already been able to enjoy Oculus Cinema, and they describe an impressive visual experience that surrounds the viewer with rows of seats in detailed environments that even reflect the light of the film on the screen. There is only one problem: the theaters are empty.
For most people, going to the movies is a social experience. And Oculus understands perfectly that a movie outing is not an activity to be enjoyed alone. In an interview with Road to VR, Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus, explained how the company "does not wish to replicate the experience of being in a cinema alone, but rather wishes to replicate the experience of being in a cinema or a movie theater at home with your friends". With this, the company is building social features that it plans to launch in the near future.
"We already have a lot of internal social features in Cinema that will be deployed in the coming months", says Luckey. "Things like the user avatar system and the ability to communicate with people across long distances". It will only be a matter of time before you schedule a day and time with your friends, and each one from their own home puts on their Oculus Rift headset and syncs the same movie, where they can communicate with their virtual peers in a computerized theater just like being at the movies.
