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System Integration for the Connected Home

A Virtual Cinema Experience Through Oculus Rift

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Customers wishing to replicate the social cinema experience without leaving the comfort of their homes might soon get a virtual reality equivalent through a VR headset and an online-capable version of the Oculus Cinema app.

Oculus CinemaEssentially Oculus Cinema is a media player app, if one claiming to be "the next best thing to owning your own personal multiplex." Currently available on the Samsung Gear smartphone-powered headset, it allows users to watch movies within a virtual cinema complete with rows of seats and simulated ambient screen lighting. However the virtual cinema is technically incomplete, since the seats surrounding the viewer are empty.

However the situation should change soon enough, as Oculus founder Palmer Luckey tells Road to VR the company plans to add online social features to the Oculus Cinema app, such as multiplayer modes.

"[W]e already have a lot of internal social functions in Cinema that are going to be rolling out in the next few months," Luckey says. "Things like avatar systems, being able to communicate with people over long distances… rather than just local multiplayer, but having actual long distant multiplayer as well.”

Luckey also adds the app will be available on Oculus' own VR headset, the Rift (the company collaborated with Samsung on the Gear VR). That said, we will wait until Oculus Cinema simulates the full cinema experience with mobile phone calls, chattering couples and virtual (overpriced) snack bars…

Go Oculus Cinema Getting Online Multiplayer and Social Features (Road to VR)