Aquilla, Spherical Video, VR – Facebook F8 Day 2

We were meant to get this on the day that #F8 Day 2 officially ended, but like all good plans unfortunately this has been sat in our draft pile.  So we’re publishing it today, and for those of you who know on the 25th and 26th March 2015, Facebook hosted the Facebook Developers Conference AKA F8.  Missed it?  No problems we have the first day right here.

On Day 2 Facebook predominately focused on app development and some of the cool features that you can expect from the new Facebook Platform and how you can integrate your smartphone apps with this new platform.  Facebook also demonstrated and introduced its very first UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) called Aquilla.

Facebook Testing Aquilla UAVs

Facebook, has for a couple of years, been involved in ensuring all of the world has access to the Internet.  However, there are parts of the world which are still not connected and it is these areas that Facebook is focusing its attention.

Aquilla is a UAV which is fitted with solar panels to help keep the aircraft in the air.  These aircraft would fly high in the air and beam down Internet access via lasers to some of the people that are in some of the most poor and/or remotest parts of the world.

Full details about the Internet.org project can be found here.

Virtual Reality is Real

Facebook also showed off its latest involvement in the development of Virtual Reality (VR).  Oculus, a Facebook owned company, are still developing their product called Oculus Rift whereby people will be taken from reality over to virtual reality.

Playing video games will feel like your actually there and will provide a whole new gaming experience.  With VR being just around the corner this is sure to provide a whole new social and monetisation opportunities.

Spherical Video

Teleportation surely isn’t possible yet, well perhaps not quite, however at the F8 conference CEO Mark Zuckerburg showed off Spherical Video whereby you will be able to view a full 360 degrees view of the screen, this is done through the use of the Oculus technology and provides the user with an immersive video experience.

This is nothing new, as we have recently seen the likes of Google adding for 360 degree video uploads to YouTube whereby you can navigate around the video feed without much hassle.

Embeddable Video

Videos on your Facebook News feed are nothing new, however, Facebook unveiled a whole new host of support features for video.  Users will now be able to upload their videos to Facebook with a file size of up 1.5GB and share their videos off the Facebook website.

This will give users new avenues with which to share their content and also give users more monetisation opportunities.

Did you miss the Facebook F8 Video Conference you can catch up on all the latest developments by visit the official F8 website here.