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In mid-April, Facebook confirmed to host the Oculus Connect 7 as a digital-only event later this year. The company now revealed the date for its annual Oculus developer conference and also renamed it as Facebook Connect. The Facebook Connect will be held on September 16 and is free to watch.
The users can watch it on Facebook Live and in VR through Oculus Venues. This is the 7th edition of the Oculus developer conference which first started in 2014. Furthermore, the company also renamed Facebook’s AR/VR team as Facebook Reality Labs.
Facebook Connect event scheduled on September 16
Prior to this announcement, Facebook Reality Labs is only a research division of Oculus. From now on, it will be called as Facebook Reality Labs Research and looks after all AR and VR products from Facebook. The list includes Oculus, Spark AR, Portal, and more.
According to Facebook, these changes will reassure Oculus as a part of Facebook. Facebook acquired Oculus in March 2014 for $2.3 billion. The announcement makes the complex naming even more confusing. Though VR will be a priority at the Facebook Connect event, we will also be seeing AR-related announcements.
Recently, Facebook made it compulsory to have a Facebook account for using the Oculus headsets. However, the users who are already having a separate Oculus account can continue using the same old way until 2023. Also, none of the upcoming standalone headsets will have support for using the Oculus account.
New Oculus Quest 2 VR headset expected
This rule change is much worse for the Oculus users who have deleted their Facebook accounts amid the privacy concerns. In November last year, the company also added “from Facebook” branding to the Instagram and WhatsApp.
Speaking of the new product announcements, there is no official confirmation yet from the company. Based on the leaks, the company will unveil the new Oculus Quest 2 standalone VR headset. Recently, the Oculus Quest 2’s codename Del Mar even appeared in the Oculus app.
It will be the successor to two-year-old Oculus Quest. The leaked images also gave us a glimpse at the third-gen Oculus Touch controllers. As of now, there isn’t much information revealed about the hardware of this VR headset.
Apart from several enhancements, the company might also bring in new features like support for Bluetooth headphones. As mentioned earlier, the Oculus Quest 2 will require a Facebook account for signing in. While the company is working on AR glasses, the launch still seems far away.