But they were too abstract and unresponsive to make me feel like I was getting to know the human on the other side. Like most VR chat applications, our avatars reflected our head motion and indicated when we spoke. Slowly, the chairs around me filled up: one with an anthropomorphic daisy, one with a disembodied cartoon face. It was tuned to a Twitch gaming channel, playing a low-resolution rendition of a Starcraft II game with live chat messages running down the side.
Once I put on the headset, a Samsung attendant popped me into a virtual home theater: four big leather chairs around a huge screen. The Gear VR video demos at Connect were distinctly screens first and social experiences second. The Gear VR's video sharing seems geared towards interactions I never have But it's hard to judge Oculus' efforts against any of those, because the Gear VR's social tools feel built for a specific kind of interaction I never have. It's an idea that many VR enthusiasts find compelling. On a smaller scale, there are conferencing systems like VTime, which is essentially a less infuriating, VR-based version of GoToMeeting. Platforms like AltSpaceVR and Convrge, for example, hold group live-streaming parties for events like the Oculus Connect keynotes. Oculus is following in the footsteps of many other Rift developers. On the Gear VR, it had something more dramatic: streaming video apps that let people watch Twitch, Netflix, and more while sitting with their friends in virtual chairs. At Connect, it expanded on this with the Medium sculpting app for the Rift. At E3, its Toybox demo let two people see each other as stylized heads and hands.
Earlier this year, it showed off a very, very subtle two-viewer mode for its short VR film Lost. But Oculus has only recently started focusing on shared experiences. This isn't surprising - Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg bought Oculus largely because of VR's social potential. Social experiences are at the core of this year's Oculus Connect.