With the acquisition of Oculus Rift, Facebook is now looking to utilize the virtual reality headset to help students and parents find the college of their dreams.
“Want to visit the college of your dreams to find out if you like it? Well, you don’t have to get on a plane or even drive there. You can take a tour and go from one Ivy League school to another in seconds.”
Oculus Rift with YouVisit
The Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets have been the pioneers for bringing the virtual world into reality. Boasting its low latency tracking technology as well as a stereoscopic 3D view, Oculus Rift has made quite the buzz around the hardware industry; enough buzz to incite Facebook to make a $2 billion dollar deal to buy the new technology. Now bringing in YouVisit, an organization based on creating an internet virtual tour, Facebook is working to combine the two organizations together to create virtual real-life tours to the students and parents.
Moving Foward
This hardware advancement will allow for less traveling and give people the chance of visiting school too far to visit. Many are probably questioning how experience. Does it really feel like you’re at school? Jared Mandel an intern from Syracuse University was able to see his own school through the eyes of Oculus Rift and was surprised at how real the student section of the stadium was. While the idea of a virtual college tour may sound enticing to many, Facebook understands that Oculus isn’t a widely available product. With it costing $350 per headsets and the levels of proficiency not being at maximum, Facebook believes that it can become an item for college fairs and recruitment events.
