Facebook is developing augmented reality glasses — but that’s not the wildest bit of future tech the company revealed during today’s Oculus Connect keynote. For these coming AR headsets, Facebook is building a virtual Earth, and it expects all of us to live in it, every day, for as many hours as possible. Maybe even all the time. And, chances are, we will.
Facebook Reality Labs is developing LiveMaps, the planet-sized foundation of future augmented reality systems. LiveMaps is a 3D version of the world, offering a shared reality that will theoretically allow users to teleport, access virtual assistants and view relevant information about the artificially generated landscapes around them. By tapping into a previously generated 3D composite of reality, AR glasses won’t need to reconstruct physical spaces in real-time, saving on computing power and allowing the hardware to run on mobile chipsets.
