At our Global Summit, the Oculus co-founder said in a keynote Facebook's Ray-Ban smart glasses offered positive results for AR

McCauley: Facebook, Ray-Ban AR a Long-Term Win

By RORY GREENER

Jack McCauley, former Oculus Co-Founder and Engineer, held a keynote speech on his time at the California-based company, where he paved the foundations for the 2014 Facebook acquisition.

During his speech, McCauley explained Facebook’s recent partnership with Rayban to produce a pair of augmented reality (AR) smartglasses, stating:

“It’s a beginning for them […] The Rayban Glasses, that’s a great idea. That has legs, the team at Seattle, with their vast experience, will be able to make that work”

Facebook released the smartglasses in early September, marking a debut in the AR sector along with virtual reality (VR) launches with the Oculus Quest 2.

McCauley added in the future, the partnership will prove beneficial as AR technology emerges, concluding,

“The AR experience with the Rayban glasses is a win for them, not in the short term, but in the long term”

Building a Foundation for Facebook

Jack McCauley segued into discussing his earlier work at Oculus and how he became involved with the firm’s industry-changing VR technologies.

Previously, McCauley gained experience with GlobalVR, a disbanded distributor of arcade VR experiences. He described the experience as “primitive”, but added he gained valuable early insights into the prospects of VR before joining Oculus founders Brandan Iribe and Lucky Palmer.

“I put it [the Oculus headset] on, took a look at it, and was blown away. Being a software engineer and working at Guitar Hero, which sold 64 million pieces, I didn’t see the legs in it at all. I said, ‘It’s probably expensive, there’s no content at all, apart from a demo and that’s an uphill battle'”

McCauley was initially sceptical, but ultimately impressed by Iribe, whose business accruement became a convincing factor in McCauley’s involvement.

“My confidence was in him [Brendan Iribe], and I liked [Lucky] Palmer, I felt fatherly towards Palmer [as] I was lot older. So I just liked the people, and if I like the people, I’ll go work there”

McCauley initially worked with Oculus as a software developer for the first Oculus development kit, which launched on Kickstarter in 2012, raising $2.4 million from over 9,000 backers.

The Oculus team then trialled the development kit version with Mark Zuckerberg, launching the foundation for the monumental $2 billion USD acquisition.

VRARA Member Mativision Featured during Facebook Oculus Keynote for VRinOR

By George Kapellos, Head of Marketing & Partnerships, Mativision

During the Keynote at the Oculus OC3, the 3rd Developers Conference in San Jose earlier today, Max Cohen, VP Mobile, showcased a selected few from the 400+ VR Apps which are available for the Oculus. 

When he reached the part about VR being educational, he said, “…people won’t be learning from textbooks, they’ll be learning experientially…” and brought to the big screen Mativision’s VRinOR App, to demonstrate his point, saying that  “… it was used to Live Stream an operation from inside the operating room…” 

For all of us at Mativision, this moment was the culmination of a long journey that started well before the world had even heard the word 'VR'. Because, Mativision was not created overnight. 

We can all remember many years ago, the efforts to put the first 360-degree video camera through its paces. To understand the basics of filming a full 'bubble' around you, the mistakes, the problems we had to solve, the development of everything from the ground up. 

It was no different when we decided that it was time to use our technology for a higher cause something that marketeers in the space have labelled 'VR for good'. 

Back in April 2016, when we live-streamed in VR a cancer removal operation, something that had never been attempted before, we were mostly interested in the reviews and comments of medical students who watched the VR stream with headsets and to our satisfaction found out that they were all overwhelmed by the enthusiasm with which they described the uniqueness of the experience, not because it was “cool”, but because it had a much higher educational impact on them. 

That is when we decided to develop VRinOR, the world’s first VR platform, dedicated to the distribution of medical training content. The platform was launched in July and since then it is being populated with real operations filmed in VR. 

We aim to establish VRinOR as the go-to-hub for VR medical training content for all medical students and doctors worldwide.

And this is just the beginning to a very exciting journey....

To learn more about Mativision's VRinOR solutions see here.