Facebook acquires Oculus Rift; Features to include Facial Performance Sensing Head displays Virtual Avatar

The most popular social networking site Facebook has recently disclosed something about what they have in mind for the Oculus Rift after its acquisition of the product last March 2014. After a year under the wraps, an initial picture of how Facebook will use its virtual reality arm has been finally revealed -a facial expression sensing head-mounted display.

Researchers at the University of Southern California in collaboration with Facebook's Oculus division have presented a method of how the VR headset will be used by the social network. The team discovered a way for the Oculus Rift to track the facial expressions of the user. This means that the headset will be able to read the smiles, frowns, grins, glares and other facial expressions the person wearing the headset makes, and recreate them in a so-called virtual body double or a virtual avatar in the social networking world.

Before this discovery, the researchers had to undergo a difficult challenge of tracking the performance of the upper half of the face since the Oculus Rift obscures the portion. Through putting eight strain gauges to its foam padding, movements of the top half portion of the face were scanned and copied.  As for the lower half, the system tracks the motion with the use of a 3-D camera attached to the headset.

Just like before, Facebook kept the specifics regarding how it will be used after its public release which is set on 2016. However, it is reported that the gaming industry is particularly eyeing the innovation as it helps improve the interactivity factor. Digital chatting is also speculated to be included in the social networking site's option. Though camera-to-camera chatting is already the traditional way to talk online, it might still be a good and exciting method to be introduced in the future.

Oculus was first founded in 2012 wherein it raised $2.4 million through crowd funding on Kickstarter. It then raised another $91 million on venture capital before it was acquired by Facebook last year for $2 billion.