Oculus Rift: a New Communication Platform

Home , Oculus (brand), Oculus Rift, Oculus Touch, Sensorama

University of Amsterdam

Department of Media Studies

Oculus Rift: A new communication platform.

New Media and Digital Culture | MA Thesis 2016 Nick van der Meulen

Date: June 24, 2016 Supervisor: dr. A. Helmond Second reader: dr. N.A.J.M. van Doorn

Abstract

In 2016, two years after Facebook announced that with their acquisition of Oculus VR they are creating a new communication platform, the consumer edition of the Oculus Rift is finally available. This research will, from a platform studies perspective, analyze in which ways the Oculus Rift, can be positioned by Facebook as its new communication platform. This will be done through discussing the key characteristics of virtual reality and analyzing the platform from both a hard- and software perspective. After investigating the apparatus and its input devices, I will explore Facebook’s Social VR demo, and review and discuss how the Oculus Rift lives up to being a communication platform.

Keywords: Oculus Rift, Virtual Reality, Facebook, Communication Platform, Platform Studies.

Table of contents

1 Introduction 4 2 A history of virtual reality 7 3 Facebook and the Oculus Rift 15 3.1 Social, and the degree of social presence 15 3.2 Facebook’s new platform 17 4 Oculus Rift: hard- or software 19 4.1 The characteristics of virtual reality 20 4.2 The use and misuse of the term virtual reality: a medium in flux 23 5 The virtual: worlds, environments and reality 25 5.1 Cyberspace 25 5.2 Avatar: interacting through a virtual body 26 6 Communication through body language 28 6.1 Post-symbolic Communication 29 7 Methodology 30 7.1 Platform studies 30 7.2 Paratexts and secondary media 31 7.3 Layered through hard- and software 31 8 The platform 33 8.1 Operating system 33 8.2 SDKs, APIs and Oculus Home, connecting users and developers 35 8.3 Game Engines 36 8.4 Hardware, the Oculus Rift apparatus 37 9 Case Study 44 9.1 Software, social applications 44 9.2 Facebook Social VR 44 10 Data gathering and privacy 51 11 Discussion 54 12 Conclusion 59 Reference list 61

1 Introduction

Virtual reality are systems through which users can immerse themselves into virtual environments, and can therefore sometimes be perceived as being relatively isolating. For outsiders, someone else who is experiencing virtual reality might not be in the most approachable position imaginable. Their eyes and ears, fully covered, give the impression that they seem to be zoned out, unable to communicate. But are they? In 2012, a young entrepreneur named Palmer Luckey revealed a $300 virtual reality headset called the Oculus Rift Developer Kit on Kickstarter (Kickstarter). Its goal of 25.000 dollar was surpassed in less than 24 hours eventually reaching near to 2.5 million dollar becoming one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns in history (Kickstarter, Most Funded). Two years later on March 12 2014, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook had agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology, for 2 billion dollar to create a “new communication platform”. According to Zuckerberg:

Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. For the past few years, this has mostly meant building mobile apps that help you share with the people you care about. We have a lot more to do on mobile, but at this point we feel we're in a position where we can start focusing on what platforms will come next to enable even more useful, entertaining and personal experiences.

This is where Oculus comes in. They build virtual reality technology, like the Oculus Rift headset. When you put it on, you enter a completely immersive computer- generated environment, like a game or a movie scene or a place far away. The incredible thing about the technology is that you feel like you're actually present in another place with other people. People who try it say it's different from anything they've ever experienced in their lives. (Zuckerberg, Oculus VR)

With the release of the consumer edition of the Oculus Rift, mass-market virtual reality seems to be on the brink of becoming a reality. Although the Oculus Rift was initially designed to be “the first truly immersive virtual reality headset for video games” (Kickstarter, Oculus campaign), with the acquisition by Facebook early adopters might just as well become able to use the Rift to enhance ordinary social experiences instead of gaming (Perry). Facebook believes that virtual reality has the potential to be more social than any other platform (Newsroom), and virtual reality can even change the way we live, work and communicate (FB Q116). 5

Facebook bought Oculus because according to Zuckerberg it is essentially a social company, and that it will form the next fundamental computing environment. On the majority of Facebook’s platforms and products such as its social network, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp, computer mediated communication is done verbally. The Oculus Rift platform will provide the traditional benefits of computer mediated communication by bringing people together across space and time and will in addition enable users to have real-time nonverbal- and face-to-face communication, which is generally recognized to be the ideal form of interpersonal communication (Palmer 290). This may be one of the reasons Zuckerberg thinks that, first there was the PC, then the web, and the next big step after the smartphone will be virtual reality. Even though this is a future vision from a listed company, with the acquisition by Facebook, the Oculus Rift is one of the first virtual reality technologies to receive a substantial investment to become a communication medium. However, to understand how a virtual reality technology as the Oculus Rift can become Facebook’s new communication platform, the question arises of what virtual reality exactly entails. Just as any medium, a primary purpose for virtual reality is the communication of content or ideas (Craig et al. 34). But what makes the Oculus Rift inherently different than more ‘traditional’ media and what makes it a communication medium? Although virtual reality has been discussed in academia in length since its inception in the early 1960s (Rheingold, Sherman and Craig, Heim, Biocca and Levy, Laurel), the term itself has been used across different fields such as cinema, computer science, the medical and pharmaceutical industry, the military, the digital entertainment industry and the communications industry. In addition, it has had various purposes such as ‘multisensory experiences’, ‘as a way of immersing users into computer generated environments’, to ‘amplify human perception and cognition’, for ‘training related technologies’ and as a ‘communication medium’. The term is loosely used in discussions everywhere ranging from the internet to immersive experiences, 3D technologies, computer animations and the transformation of old media into digital ones (Lister 388). Many researchers try to avoid giving virtual reality a solid definition and therefore instead describe it according to a set of characteristics (Heim, Laurel, Sherman and Craig). Like Heim, Laurel and Sherman & Craig, I also think that creating an understanding of virtual reality is best done by exploring a set of characteristics. However, since these characteristics were generally established in relation to older virtual reality technologies, I think that it is important to pay attention to the new developments which the Oculus Rift enables and how they are positioned by Facebook as a new communication platform. Up until now, most of the virtual reality technologies were developed for research purposes only and no coherent platforms were available to the public. The majority of research into virtual reality as a communication medium, has been conducted before the late 1990s. Since then, development of virtual reality technologies (especially in relation to a 6 communication medium) seem to have stagnated. Because of the mass market consumer availability of the Oculus Rift platform, virtual reality can now be researched as a communication platform that can have a global impact on culture and society. This research will therefore investigate new development in the field of virtual reality and, at the same time, research one of the first virtual reality technologies as a communication platform. It would thereby contribute to the field of platform studies as Bogost and Montfort consider the platform to be one of the most neglected levels in the analyses of digital media (147). This research will therefore consist of a platform study which aims to answer the following question:

In which ways can the Oculus Rift, through its hard- and software, be positioned by Facebook as its new communication platform?

In order to answer the research question, the first part of this platform study will focus on the key characteristics and understandings of (social) virtual reality as a communication medium in a theoretical framework. To get an understanding of virtual reality and the Oculus Rift as a communication platform, I will first explore the history of virtual reality and discuss how different technologies preceded the Oculus Rift. Second, I will introduce the concept of social virtual reality and compare it in relation to José van Dijck’s notion of the ‘social’ in social networks. Subsequently, I will discuss how the degree of social presence differs for certain platforms based on Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein’s ‘Classification of Social Media’. Next I will look at Oculus’ position within Facebook and investigate (social) virtual reality according to the key characteristics and understandings of virtual reality discussed by virtual reality researchers Michael Heim and William Sherman & Alan Craig and VR pioneer Brenda Laurel, such as immersion, presence and the virtual. In the last part of the theoretical framework, I will explore which forms of communication virtual reality makes possible and how they are enabled. After outlining the theoretical framework, I will, through parts of the platform studies methodology developed by Bogost and Montfort, analyze the hard- and software of the Oculus Rift, discuss how it is a platform, and explore the case study of Facebook’s Social VR demo which is the first demonstration given by Facebook with what they have in mind for the Oculus Rift as their new communication platform. Finally, I discuss my findings in relation to my research question and offer concluding remarks in which ways the Oculus Rift, through its hard- and software, can be positioned by Facebook as a new communication platform.

2 A history of virtual reality

The birth of virtual reality can be traced back to the stereoscope, a device for viewing a stereoscopic pair of separate images invented in 1838 by Sir Charles Wheatstone (Silverman 729). The concept of virtual reality however, was developed in the 1950s and 1960s when the first technical devices were created by the engineering wizards in the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area later becoming Silicon Valley, the home of the world’s largest high-tech corporations (McKenna 229). In the 1960s, while the largest part of western society was occupied with looking at the soothing light of network television, Mort Heilig patented and attempted to market an arcade version of what might be the first virtual reality system: The Sensorama (Fig. 1) (Rheingold 51). Heilig imagined the system to be the cinema of the future when in the early 1950s the film industry was threatened by television. Hollywood started looking at what they could do that the television people could not do. 3D movie techniques, spatialized audio, wide screens and other technical innovations that were previously unthought-of became attractive (54). According to Heilig, when you watch TV or a movie in a theater, you are sitting in one reality, and at the same time you are looking at another one through an imaginary transparent wall. However, when you enlarge that window enough, you get a visceral sense of personal involvement. “You feel the experience; you do not just see it” (55). As the name already indicated, the Sensorama was all about this sensory experience. It was built as a classic arcade cabinet and featured a three-dimensional display, vibrating seat, and scent producer, the Sensorama was Heilig’s vision of media as extension of the senses, a concept which Marshall McLuhan famously defined in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Heilig's arcade style cabinet was only a small realization of his much grander vision for a mass medium that would convey multisensory experiences to its users (Biocca and Levy 11). In 2016, such a medium for conveying multisensory artificial experiences with the Oculus Rift is becoming a reality. However, the pathways to today’s virtual reality technologies did not come from cinema alone. Rather, the development of machines to think with, the extension of computer based tools to amplify and extend the human senses, led to the emergence of a form of experience theater from the middle of a field completely different then cinema; computer science. One of the key figures in computer science was Ivan Sutherland known as the creator of groundbreaking computer interface Sketchpad (Sutherland, Sketch pad 329). Sketchpad is considered to be the ancestor of modern computer-aided design (CAD) programs as well as a major breakthrough in the development of computer graphics in general. Sutherland demonstrated with Sketchpad that computer graphics could be used both for technical and artistic purposes. At the same time, Sketchpad was one of the first programs to introduce the Graphical User Interface (GUI) (Myers et.al 4). Two years after creating the revolutionary 8 computer program, in 1965, the graphics pioneer conceived the first head mounted display which he termed ‘the Ultimate Display’ (Fig. 2): “The fundamental idea behind the three- dimensional display was to represent the user with a perspective image which changes as he moves” (Sutherland, A head-mounted 757). With this, Sutherland created a framework which many developers used to immerse users in computer generated environments instead of peering in through a narrow window (Biocca and Levy 3). Although the apparatus was hanging from the ceiling and the displays consisted of wire frames, three-dimensional models could be displayed and the user’s position could be changed to get different perspectives thanks to the tracking of head movement. The illusion of three-dimensionality created by Sutherland’s first display took advantage of the way we are accustomed to seeing our view of the world, just like Sir Charles Wheatstone’s stereoscope well over a hundred years ago (Rheingold 106). Sutherland defined the notion of ‘virtual environments’ in a speech held at the International Federation of Information Processing Congress in 1965, as computer generated worlds displayed through graphics on the screen (Sutherland, A head-mounted 763). He explained that the increased immersion he was aiming for could be achieved through making use not only of the human visual sense but also through the ears and the sense of feel as well. Rheingold explains that:

Sutherland wanted to use all the channels for communicating with the human being that the mind already knows how to interpret. The way human beings express themselves with physical objects, pushing and pulling manipulating with their hands appeared to be one of the most important parts in the immersion in virtual environments. (Rheingold 39)

Sutherland explained that it should be possible to develop software, wherein the virtual world would look, feel, and sound as much as possible like a real world to the human mind, which could then be displayed through the head mounted display (Sutherland, A head-mounted 763). This orchestrated marriage of hard- and software is to this day used as one of the key components to a more immersive experience. In the book Communication in the Age of Virtual Reality, Frank Biocca and Mark Levy question if “virtual reality technology is the first step towards the ultimate display” or even “the Ultimate Communication medium” (7). Some of the pioneers of virtual reality have heralded virtual reality as the ultimate form of interaction between humans and machines and the first medium that does not narrow the human spirit (Rheingold 156). Although these opinions can, to some extent, be perceived as somewhat exaggerated, Mark Zuckerberg thinks that virtual reality is going to change the way we will feel present in another place with other people. Sutherland envisioned that “The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the 9 computer can control the existence of matter” (Sutherland, The ultimate display 506). In the mid-1970s, Myron W. Krueger a programmer and computer artist attempted to revolutionize how humans interacted with machines by creating a new kind of experience he termed ‘artificial reality’ (Wardrip-Fruin 377). Now not just the computer could control the existence of matter in this room, but the user(s) as well. Krueger’s artificial reality was based on a responsive environment and was presented as the basis for a new aesthetic medium based on real-time interactions between men and machines (Krueger, Responsive environments 386). Although Krueger’s responsive environment was not based on the head-mounted display principle Sutherland developed, but consisted of a projector-based virtual reality system, he did continue in the direction where previously Morton Heilig’s ‘Sensorama’ explored artificial reality in the context of next-generation cinematic experiments (Krueger, Responsive environments 377).

Fig. 1 Sensorama (Mortonheilig), Fig. 2 The Ultimate Display (Sutherland, The Ultimate Display), Fig. 3 VIDEOPLACE (Krueger, Responsive environments)

Krueger, in Responsive Environments, states that, usually, interaction between man and machine is limited to making use of their fingers or input options such as pens, and that he was dissatisfied with such a restricted dialogue (382). In his research, he therefore explored more interesting forms of interaction, which resulted in a concept he called responsive environment. In this environment the computer responds intelligently to the actions of users through complex graphics and sounds (383). With his project VIDEOPLACE (Fig. 3), Krueger created a conceptual environment with no physical existence which united people in separate locations in a common visual experience. The project allowed people to ‘communicate and interact’ through the video medium (384). Krueger compared VIDEOPLACE with a telephone conversation, where there is a sense of being together although touch and sight are not possible. VIDEOPLACE however, amplifies this sense of being together by including vision, physical dimension and a new interpretation of touch to communication methods. VIDEOPLACE consisted of two or more identical environments which could be adjacent or hundreds of miles apart. In each environment, a single person walked into a darkened room 10 where he found himself confronted by an 8 by 10 feet rear-view projection screen. On the screen the persons saw their own life-size image and the image of one or more other people. All the persons were in the room by themselves, the other people represented on the screens were in other environments. The participants could interact with each other through physically moving around in the room. Their images, freed from physical constraints, could be moved, rotated, shrunken, or pasted together in various ways. Because of this, the full capability of video processing could be used to communicate and interact with other people (384), making it one of the first (virtual reality) technologies to enable geographically separated users to communicate with each other through speech and graphical visualizations. A similar project was conducted at Xerox PARC in the late 1980s; PARC called it Electronic co-presence. One wall of a room at PARC showed the video view of a room at another Xerox research facility in Oregon. People would schedule meetings, or they would just wander into their respective ends of the two-way, full-time, shared video space, and start a conversation (127). Art and research projects like Krueger’s VIDEOPLACE and PARC’s Electronic co-presence, involving the ability to use multiple senses for communication, showed that besides verbal communication, nonverbal communication through graphical visualizations were possible as well. Although much research into the first virtual reality systems was done by computer scientists such as Sutherland and Krueger, important work in the virtual reality field -other than applications for computer science- was done by the University of North Carolina (UNC), which used virtual reality technologies as a scientific visualization aid (Fig. 4). A dedicated group was conducting research into virtual reality since the late 1960s mainly focusing on the development of ‘medical and pharmaceutical imaging projects’. Virtual reality technologies allowed them to amplify human perception and cognition and opened the opportunity for better research in the field (Bertol et al. 80). For this amplification the scientists used input devices which made use of force feedback to extend even more of their senses. This combination of virtual reality and input device greatly increased productivity by acting as an interface between the scientist and its object of study (81).

Fig. 4 UNC (Osu), Fig. 5 Apple II (Musée Bolo), Fig. 6 Atari 800 (Bilby)

Not long after, in 1977, Apple released its Apple II, an 8-bit personal computer which turned out to be one of the first highly mass-produced microcomputer products (Fig. 5). Almost simultaneously, Atari Inc., was at its top, famous for creating arcade videogames. After broadening their product range from arcade games to home computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s the introduction of the Atari 800 (Fig. 6), and systems like the Apple II, heralded a new era for consumers. They were now able to own their own relatively affordable computer and, even more special, work on it without it requiring them to have a degree in computer- engineering. Groundbreaking software applications such as VisiCalc, which was the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, were being released. Although the original idea of Sutherland was to introduce virtual reality systems to increase the way in which mind and machine work together more efficiently, a real breakthrough here came at the start of the 1980s when the first personal computers that offered GUI’s were being produced. With the development of the GUI, 2D human-computer interfaces allowed users to make use of input devices such as the mouse as a 3D pointing device, instead of specifying a document or a program by typing in a command code, the mouse made it possible to interact with a computer by using a natural gesture. This decreased the popularity of the big, clunky and expensive virtual reality head mounted displays immensely (74). With the introduction of the world wide web in the early 1990s, the personal computer could -through the internet- now be used as a global information space, accessible for virtually anyone (Berners-Lee 461). This in stark contrast to the virtual reality technologies which were still far from being available to the public. Most of the companies developing virtual reality in the 1990s were small start-ups concentrated on the west coast of the U.S. Although large telecommunication companies such as U.S. West and NYNEX were interested in virtual reality technologies, none of them made a substantial investment since the emerging virtual reality market was not yet big enough (Biocca and Levy 27). Developments in virtual reality as communication medium were therefore mostly research related. In the late 1980s training related technologies were developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View (Laurel 2). It was there that a human interface researcher, a cognitive scientist, an adventure-game programmer and a small group of home inventers created the first ‘affordable’ virtual reality prototypes (Rheingold 129). Up until then, virtual reality systems were incredibly expensive to produce and the technologies of the time did not make it any easier. The system developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center bore a strong resemblance to the head mounted display developed 25 years earlier by Sutherland and were mostly constructed with off the shelf parts (Fig. 7) (164). It turned out that LCD displays from portable televisions could substitute for one of the most expensive components. As with the development of the ARPANET in the early 1970s, the development of virtual reality systems played an important role in the US military. Although the reason for the development of the 12

ARPANET as a network designed for military command and control against nuclear threats is still subject to debate (Leiner et al. 23), its other purpose –as a tool to improve military tactical and management decision making and to expand the horizon of networked infrastructures– (Lukasik 6) shows that the US military was looking to improve and speedup often expensive ways of communication and control. Virtual reality technologies however, were not used by the US military to ‘improve or speedup ways of communication and control’ but reduced costs significantly as starting pilots and future astronauts would no longer have to train in real fighter planes but could use a virtual reality simulator developed by NASA which showed how well the medium was capable of replicating the real world (Laurel 2). In her working paper What is Virtual Reality, Brenda Laurel describes that the first example she saw of immersive virtual reality was in 1987 at NASA’s Ames Research Center where “I felt myself to be immersed in a virtual world in which I could take action.” (2). Howard Rheingold writer of the book ‘Virtual Reality’ visited NASA Ames Research a year later in December 1988. At that time, NASA made use of Lycra gloves, lined with sensors running down the back, which translated finger-motions into a stream of digital snapshots and transported the data to a computer (133). Because of the gloves, Rheingold was able to see a digital representation of his hand in the virtual environment. As cockpits became increasingly complicated, technologies like the Lycra gloves enabled NASA to improve their flight simulator and make them more sophisticated and realistic (Biocca and Levy 27).

Fig. 7 NASA (NASA), Fig. 8 DataGlove (Scientific American), Fig. 9 Reality Built for Two (The Verge)

Many companies developed input devices like sensor-equipped wired gloves at the time, but the Lycra glove used in NASA’s virtual reality system was developed by a company named VPL Research Inc. Tom Zimmerman and Jaron Lanier founded the company in 1985 after they both left Atari Lab (Zimmerman et.al 189). Three years earlier, the Atari Sunnyvale Research Laboratory was established to explore future development in the digital entertainment industry. It operated for only two years as the video game crash of 1983 –which was a massive 13 recession of the video game industry– had taken its toll (Izushi and Aoyama 1850). Revenues had peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then plummeted to around $100 million by 1985, a decline of more than 95%. When Zimmerman told Atari about the Glove, they offered him $10,000. He refused the offer, and developed a more refined version with the help of engineer Young Harvill and Lanier, nowadays known as the ‘DataGlove’ (Fig. 8). Although Zimmerman played an important role in VPL, it is Lanier who is often revered to as the ‘inventor’ of virtual reality. Lanier was characterized by his drive towards more creativity and accessibility in virtual environments (Lanier, You are not 71). He got the idea that he could create an entirely new computer language, one that could not only be used by experts but was accessible for everyone. The concept was that instead of dry alphanumeric codes, beautiful images and sounds were used to program. This same use of images and sounds is something of which Lanier thinks that can have a profound impact on the way we communicate through virtual reality (Scientific American). However, Lanier and Zimmer did not limit themselves to gloves. After the NASA glove and the initial marketing successes of the DataGlove, VPL started working on a commercial version of the virtual reality head mounted display which they called EyePhones. Even though virtual reality systems now became commercially available, extremely high costs of the systems ranging from $50,000 to $250,000 meant that only a limited number of companies could afford the technology (Rheingold 135). The EyePhone consisted of 2 colour LCD monitors viewed using a LEEP optical system (Blanchard et al. 3). Stereoscopic cues and proprietary diffusion techniques were used to merge the pixels of the LCD into a continuous image and to reduce conflicts between depth of field. The monitors and optics were mounted in a soft, counter-weighted headdress which according to Lanier had physical and psychological advantages over the more rigid and intimidating helmets NASA used. The techniques were later applied in their ‘Reality Built for Two’ system (Fig. 9) which was one of the first systems that enabled more than one user to share a virtual space through head mounted display. The user’s body movements were translated into the virtual environment via the tracking of the DataGlove and EyePhones and represented by an avatar (Blanchard et al. 35). The design developed by VPL is still applied in that of the Oculus Rift today, and between 1988 and 1990, VPL was the “gloves and goggles” vendor, the first vendor of “off-the-shelf” VR systems, supplying mainly to universities and the military (Rheingold 165) With the introduction of the Nintendo Power Glove in 1989, VPL even managed to get their technology into popular gaming culture for a low cost compared to the $6300 DataGlove (134). One year later in 1990, VPL Research however, filed for bankruptcy because of the technology was not yet ready for consumers. Its patents were eventually sold in 1999 to Sun Microsystems (Lanier, Sun Buys VPL). Thus far, I have shown a wide variety of developments and purposes for virtual reality across different fields such as cinema, computer science, the medical and pharmaceutical 14 industry, the military, the digital entertainment industry and the communications industry. Although the first development of virtual reality dates back to the early 1950s it was not until the late 1970s that the first research into the technology as a communication medium was conducted by the likes of Krueger and 10 year later Xerox PARC. Both VIDEOPLACE and Electronic co-presence consisted of physical rooms where the visualisations of other people were displayed on large projector screens. This meant, that if the researchers wanted to expand their network, an entirely new physical room had to be arranged. In the early 1990s this changed when with the Reality Built for Two system made by VPL, the space of the room was no longer a physical affair but a virtual one. The technologies of the time however were still far too expensive for both consumers and companies, and as the market was not yet big enough, telecommunication companies were hesitant to invest in the technology (Biocca and Levy 27). Except for the research done by Krueger, Xerox PARC and VPL with their Reality Built for Two system, little developments were being conducted into virtual reality as a communication medium. In the 1980s and 1990s it was heralded as the ultimate communication medium by virtual reality pioneers such as Krueger and Lanier (Biocca and Levy 7). However, it was not until 2012, when Luckey revealed his $300 Oculus Rift, that virtual reality as a communication medium got a new impulse again from its owner Facebook.

3 Facebook and the Oculus Rift

With over 1.5 billion people logging in to their Facebook accounts, Facebook is the largest social network site in the United States and in Europe, with the highest penetration among Internet users (Statista, Number of Facebook). Platforms like Facebook enable people to make connections by sharing expressive and communicative content. The widespread presence of Facebook enables users to allocate many of their social activities to the online environment (Van Dijck 4). In VIDEOPLACE, Krueger managed to create a connection between his virtual environments allowing users to interact with each other and the environment (Krueger 384). This preconceived connection however, did not enable the same possibilities for online connections as technologies such as Facebook do today. According to Facebook, their mission is to “give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” (Facebook), which means that in order to achieve this objective, communicative tools are offered by Facebook which enable their users to connect and share their experiences. According to José van Dijck, the sharing of content enhances connectedness between people (35). Connectedness can be seen as “human interaction on an individual and community level” (Van Dijck 4). Many social media platforms embraced the notion of ‘connectedness’ which nurture connections, build communities, advance democracy, and enable users to create and share content through the layers of their platforms. However, with the rapid growth of social media platforms such as Facebook, companies started to appear less interested in their users and communities, and more interested in the data they create. With the introduction of automated forms of interaction or connectivity, features such as the ‘Like Button’ plugin (which sends valuable user data to Facebook every time a user ‘likes’ something) (Gerlitz, Helmond 5), enabled Facebook to algorithmically gather and process large quantities of data both from and outside of its platform (Van Dijck 4). Where virtual reality technologies such as ‘VIDEOPLACE’ and ‘Reality Built for Two’ connected two or slightly more people through virtual reality, Facebook seems to want to make virtual reality social, as the name of their Oculus application ‘Social VR’ implies.

3.1 Social, and the degree of social presence

According to Van Dijck, the meaning of social in social media platforms, seems to both encompass “(human) connectedness and (automated) connectivity” (12). As Facebook is now owner of Oculus, this raises the question if Van Dijck’s meaning of ‘social’ will also be applied by Facebook to Social VR and the Rift as a communication platform, something I will explore in the case study about Facebook’s Social VR demo. However, social seems to play an important 16 role for Facebook as they explain that ‘Virtual reality has the potential to be more social than any other platform.” (Newsroom, F8). But what makes virtual reality more social compared to social networking sites? In Users of the world, Unit! Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein categorize social media based on the degree of social presence it allows (61). Every type of social interaction people have is influenced by their will to regulate the impression others have of them. (Goffman, in Kaplan 62). For example, this is done by making a good impression and creating an image that is consistent with one’s identity (images on a Facebook profile). “Usually, such a presentation is done through self-disclosure; that is, the conscious or unconscious revelation of personal information (e.g., thoughts, feelings, likes, dislikes) that is consistent with the image one would like to give.” (Kaplan and Haenlein 62). However, Kalplan and Haenlein assume that a second classification can be created “based on the degree of self-disclosure it requires and the type of self-presentation it allows.” (62). By combining the two, they created a classification of social media (Table 1).

Social presence/ Media richness Low Medium High

Social networking Virtual social worlds High Blogs sites (e.g., Second Life) Self- (e.g., Facebook) presentation/ Self- disclosure Collaborative Content Virtual game worlds Low Projects communities (e.g., World of (e.g., Wikipedia) (e.g., YouTube) Warcraft)

Table. 1 Classification of Social Media by social presence/media richness and self- presentation/self-disclosure. (Kaplan and Haenlein 62)

When looked at social presence and media richness, this classification shows that (often text based) collaborative platforms such as Wikipedia score the lowest. While social networking sites such as Facebook, are in the middle enabling (in addition to text) the sharing of pictures, videos and other forms of media. Virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, score the highest, as they, according to Kaplan and Haenlein, try to replicate real life encounters such as face-to-face communication. The biggest difference comes when the virtual social world and virtual game worlds are compared in the light of self-presentation/self- disclosure. In virtual game worlds like World of Warcraft, a lower level of self-disclosure is required as they are ruled by strict guidelines such as choosing classes (warriors, mages, 17 rogues) or other paths that decide the destiny of the user (62). Virtual social worlds such as Second Life, allow the user to choose their own path and choose how and as who they want to be perceived (a topic which I cover in greater detail in in my discussion on the ‘virtual’, ‘cyberspace’ and ‘the avatar’ in chapter 5). That virtual social worlds such as Second Life create substantially more social presence/media richness compared to Facebook, might be one of the reasons for Facebook to expand their services through the Oculus Rift.

3.2 Facebook’s new platform

Ever since Facebook acquired Oculus in the spring of 2014, Zuckerberg has described virtual reality as the “social platform” of the future—as the way we will not only play games and watch movies, but also how we actually interact with each other (FB Q415). In an Interview with the Verge, Cory Ondrejka –the co-creator of the immensely popular (social) virtual world Second Life who is now VP of engineering at Facebook– explains that he introduced Mark Zuckerberg to Oculus. According to Ondrejka, virtual reality creates completely new ways of sharing experiences, by letting you share a sense of place and presence, and moving past the things we are used to with what we can share from our smartphone (Schnipper). He continued that the opportunity to be able to partner with the team of the Oculus Rift, that created an affordable, well-functioning virtual reality headset, which is part of a platform that enables communication, creativity and expression, is right in the middle of their mission “focusing on what platforms will come next to enable even more useful, entertaining and personal experiences” (Zuckerberg, Oculus VR). Ondrejka was also asked if virtual reality is going to bring people closer together or push them further apart (Schnipper). He explained that virtual reality will enable people to connect and feel like they are really ‘there’ with other people, for example, people can capture the places they love to be and share it with their friends through 360-degree video. A new experience compared to the text and videos you will get from products such as Facebook’s social network, Instagram or WhatsApp today. Since its inception, Facebook has acquired more than 50 companies including billion dollar deals such as communication platforms for mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing, and social networking service Instagram in 2012 and more recently instant messaging client WhatsApp in 2014 (Newsroom, Facebook to Acquire). When Zuckerberg launched Facebook in February 2004, the initial years of the platform development were mostly focused on the development for web (Goggin 4). They later expanded their services to smartphones, when in October 2007, they launched their fully fledged mobile platform ‘Facebook Platform for mobiles’ right after the introduction of the first iPhone (4). Facebook’s transition to mobile strengthened their position as a “mass social media platform”, gaining popularity across countries outside North-America and Europe (5). In 2016, of the 1.09 billion daily active users, 18 over 989 million are accessing Facebook via mobile (Newsroom, company info). Although according to Zuckerberg “to make the world more open and connected”, Facebook still has a lot more to do on mobile, at this moment they are in a position that they can start “focusing more on what platforms will come next” (Zuckerberg, Oculus VR). At the F8 conference on April 12 2016, Zuckerberg for the first time showed a technology roadmap which detailed the ways in which “technologies will help bring people together and give everyone a voice” (Fig. 10) (Newsroom, F8).

Fig. 10 Facebook 10-year technology roadmap. (Newsroom, F8)

Virtual reality occupies a prominent place within this technology roadmap, dividing the section VR/AR into: Mobile VR, Rift, Touch, Social VR and AR Tech. Besides Oculus’ hardware technologies such as: Mobile VR, Rift and Touch, Facebook also distinguishes Social VR, the software application of which they gave a demonstration that same F8 conference. For Facebook, virtual reality and specifically their Oculus Rift platform, seems to consist out of both hard- and software. This raises certain questions about the definition of virtual reality which I will explore by analyzing a set of virtual reality characteristics and understandings.

4 Oculus Rift: hard- or software

In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan famously proposed that the media, not the content that they carry, should be the focus of study (7-21). From McLuhan’s standpoint a medium impacts human experience and society through its formal and technical properties (4). In line with the Mcluhanesque vision, virtual reality, just as any medium, is designed to extend the human sensorium. However, virtual reality cannot be defined solely through McLuhan’s understanding of media. As Biocca and Levy explain “If VR consists of a hardware system, where do we look to identify a single virtual reality? Examining the technological apparatus alone does not seem adequate for this purpose.” (34). In his article Artificial Reality Krueger defines virtual reality as follows:

The terms virtual worlds, virtual cockpits, and virtual workstations were used to describe specific projects. In 1989, Jaron Lanier, CEO of VPL, coined the term virtual reality to bring all of the virtual projects under a single rubric. The term therefore typically refers to three-dimensional realities implemented with stereo viewing goggles and reality gloves. (Krueger xiii)

Not everyone within the scientific community however liked the phrase coined by Lanier. At MIT, the University of North Carolina, and NASA they felt that the pop culture phrase was just a sexy term for TV, magazines and the newspaper (Rheingold 126). Researchers considered that their work could better be described in terms such as ‘virtual environments’ or ‘simulation’ (Biocca and Levy 4), which, as I outlined in chapter 2 ‘A history of virtual reality’, may have to do with the fact that many technologies differentiated substantially from each other. Although it seems that the use of the term virtual reality held up, the term itself is still often described rather abstract. Sherman and Craig describe virtual reality as:

a medium composed of interactive computer simulations that sense the participant's position and actions and replace or augment the feedback to one or more senses, giving the feeling of being mentally immersed or present in the simulation. (Sherman and Craig 13)

They explain that the definition they present is “both narrow enough to discard many misleading uses of the term virtual reality and broad enough to include the wide variety of devices used by practitioners of the medium.” (14). Even though the definition of the term virtual reality seems to change over time and is often described abstract, it includes the notion of both hard- and software. To still be able to describe virtual reality, researches often break 20 up the term into a set of characteristics instead of one solid definition (Sherman and Craig, Heim, Laurel). By delving deeper into these characteristics of virtual reality, I can shed light on how the Oculus Rift can be positioned as a new communication platform through its hard- and software.

4.1 The characteristics of virtual reality

In The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, Michael Heim suggests that virtual reality can be described in terms of seven different characteristics: simulation, interaction, artificiality, immersion, full-body immersion, telepresence and networked communications (110) These characteristics are necessary for the Oculus Rift to increase the way in which people will feel like they are, what Zuckerberg calls, “actually present in another place with other people” (Zuckerberg, Oculus VR).

4.1.1 The immersion model

Heim explains that for simulation it is necessary to recreate an imitation of the real world, which can, for example, be achieved through realistic use of images and sound. Interaction, in turn, enables users to interact with these imitations. This can be as seemingly uncomplicated as throwing a digital file in the trashcan of your computer or as extensive as altering the virtual environment itself. Artificiality, according to Heim, are virtually constructed spaces where interaction with the world is possible and allow for a better immersion. Both immersion and full-body immersion are related to the degree to which the user will feel part of the environment either partially through vision and hearing, or their full-body (112). Telepresence refers to the effect felt when controlling real world objects from a distant location, as well as the effect people feel when they are aware of what's going on, and are able to accomplish tasks with, and immerse themselves in virtual reality or virtual environments (114). In academia telepresence is now often replaced by the shorter ‘presence’ (Sheridan 120). Heim calls these six topics the immersion model, since they all contribute to user immersion by extending the senses (Heim 114). At Facebook’s F8 conference on April 13 2016, Zuckerberg announced that at Facebook’s recently established Social VR team, they are working on challenges that involve combining a ‘sense of presence’ with the ability to ‘interact with the environment’ and ‘communicating through body language’ as well as ‘voice’ (Newsroom, F8). For Facebook creating presence is important, as it is the degree to which users will feel part of the virtual environment. Since immersion and presence are closely related to one another, and an 21 understanding of the terms is necessary for the case study I will explore about Facebook’s ‘Social VR demo’, I will discuss both terms more extensively in the next chapters.

4.1.2 Extending the senses: Immersion

In 1962 Marshall McLuhan envisioned that

The next medium, whatever it is—it may be the extension of consciousness—will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopaedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind. (McLuhan, The Gutenberg galaxy 158)

In virtual reality the extension of the consciousness and of the senses is essential to creating convincing immersion. Immersion is the degree to which the user will feel part of the environment. This feeling is caused by several factors: isolation from the outside environment, the perception of the user in the environment, the perception of movement of the user and through natural, logical ways of interaction (Witmer and Singer 227). Immersion can be solely a mental state or can be accomplished through physical means: physical immersion is a defining characteristic of virtual reality and is often achieved by synthetic stimulus of the body’s senses. Mental immersion, in addition, creates a state of being deeply engaged and a suspension of disbelief. This is generally accomplished through visualization and is probably the goal of most media creators such as video game developers (Sherman and Craig 7). These factors ensure that the user appears to be more in the virtual environment (instead of just watching around) and are therefore almost exclusively found in virtual reality. Although immersion can be achieved through mental or physical means, for the Oculus rift, interaction with the device is always necessary. The interaction between technical devices and the human sensorium have, according to McLuhan, always had a profound impact on human social life (4). Although McLuhan has often been accused of being a technical determinist, the social impact of the immersion through virtual reality head mounted displays raised several questions back in the 1980s with the development of the first generation. Jaron Lanier wrote in his manifesto You are not a Gadget how experimental digital gadgets, like new variations on virtual reality, can have profound consequences on the experiences of the persons who are using it. Changing the height of a user’s avatar in virtual reality for example can transform their self-esteem and social self- perception (Lanier, you are not 6). Because of this, Lanier was often asked if the technologies 22 he was working on, like virtual reality, “might unleash the demons of human nature. Would the users become addicted to virtual reality as if it were a drug? Would they become trapped in it, unable to escape back to the physical world where the rest of us live?” (7). Although some of these questions were found silly by Lanier, others were prescient. In the United States, burn patients are being helped to escape the pain of burn injuries by immersing them in the virtual reality of a video game during treatment. The video game enabled the patients to divert their presence to that of the virtual environment of the video game instead of the procedure.

4.1.3 Creating presence

According to Bob G. Witmer and Michael J. Singer in Measuring Presence in Virtual Environments: A Presence Questionnaire, the feeling of presence is created by two factors: involvement and immersion. Involvement is the degree to which the user feels involved, and is caused by the focusing on a coherent set of stimuli. This coherence allows the users to be more involved with his or her surroundings. The increased degree of focus and coherence therefore increases the involvement and thus more presence. However, involvement is not only tied to virtual environments and can be perceived by reading books, watching a movie or a play (227). Presence can be defined as the subjective experience of being in one place or environment, even when one is physically situated in another, as the example of burn patients showed (Witmer and Singer 226). In Being There: The Subjective Experience of Presence, Carrie Heeter suggests that there are three kinds of presence that are the key components for a convincing virtual experience: personal, environmental and social presence (262-271). Through personal presence, the user experiences the virtual environment as if he or she actually is there. This can be enhanced by environmental presence which indicates how the virtual environments respond on the user’s actions and behaviors. Can the users, for instance, manipulate the world or are the laws of physics comparable with real-life? And the last, and for this research the most import one, is social presence. Social presence means, that the presence of other people, automatically creates a more convincing presence for the user (267). This can be as simple as connectivity tools that indicate the presence of friends such as ‘friend lists’ or ‘leaderboards’ or as extensive as an actual visual representation of the user trough, for example, an avatar. Networked communications are therefore essential for the Oculus Rift as it enables it to connect people and increase social presence.

4.1.2 Networked communications

In the ‘immersion model’ Heim deliberately left out networked communications because according to him and virtual reality pioneers such as Jaron Lanier, networked communications are equally as important as the immersion model since it brings connectivity into virtual reality (116). Networked communications, for example, enable the Oculus Rift platform to let geographically separated users inhabit the same virtual space. Users of the Oculus Rift can eventually connect with existing Facebook friends and play games or strike up a conversation through Oculus Home (Healey). Although from this perspective it seems that virtual reality is a good candidate for a new communications medium, what are the characteristics that set apart the platform from, for example, communication platforms such as Facebook’s social network or their other products?

4.2 The use and misuse of the term virtual reality: a medium in flux

In her recent working paper What is Virtual Reality from April 2016, Laurel describes in specific terms the formal and structural aspects of virtual reality through some of its core characteristics. According to her, the term virtual reality has been used and misused in the past and she sees the same trend returning with the launch of the Oculus Rift. She explains that for example 360-degree immersive video and games such as Second Life are often described as virtual reality while they are not. In virtual reality a participant must have affordances for moving about in the scene, take action in the world and perceive the consequences, something which 360-degree video does not offer (3). Although Second Life does offer these affordances, the game is designed for use on two-dimensional displays, and can therefore inherently not be described as virtual reality as it does not enable a complete surround environment for the user (2). She continues that the application of the term virtual reality to CAVE experiences such as Myron Krueger’s ‘VIDEOPLACE’ and Xerox PARC’s ‘Electronic co-presence’ are questionable (2). Although I believe that virtual reality is a medium in flux and no solid definition can be applied to it, characteristics that Laurel and Heim use however, create a detailed description of the medium (both from a hard- and software perspective), while leaving room for interpretation. In her working paper, Laurel created a list of core characteristics of virtual reality which will act as a recurring theme during this platform study to research the Oculus rift as a new communication platform (Table 2).

The core characteristics Virtual Reality 1. A complete surround environment. 2. Affordances for depth perception and motion parallax. 3. Spatialized audio, not just stereo. 4. Affordances for tracking the participant’s direction of motion distinct from the direction of gaze. 5. The only “camera” is the participant’s sensorium. 6. Natural gesture and movement. 7. Affordances for narrative construction. 8. The principle of action.

Table. 2 Some of the core characteristics virtual reality. (Laurel 2-3)

By now, I have given a detailed description considering Oculus’ position within Facebook and the meaning of ‘social’ in social virtual reality. I discussed why virtual reality can be perceived as both a hard- and software system, and I explored the key characteristics and understandings of virtual reality. According to Laurel, “The definitive goal” of virtual reality is “achieving sensory immersion in a virtual environment, including a sense of presence”. In the next chapter I will therefore inquire how ‘the virtual’, in virtual environment, relates to the Oculus Rift as a new communication platform, and discuss its related the topics.

5 The virtual: worlds, environments and reality

The virtual, although often co-opted to imply that virtual reality technology is involved, in the Deleuzian philosophy, can be seen as that which has a real existence even if it cannot be treated as a tangible object (Shield 284). The virtual therefore does not have to be perceived as the opposite of the real “instead it is a component of the experiencing of the real” (Farman 22). Meeting someone via virtual reality in a virtual environment can be so real that it alters the ways we “identify ourselves, the ways we use language, and the ways we conceive of everyday space” (22). The term virtual had many meanings such as virtue, force and power over the years and originated from the Latin word virtus (37) At the end of the 1950s it began to be used to describe computer simulated virtual environments where objects can exist virtually in that environment (Sherman and Craig 16). The term virtual environment is regularly used as a synonym for both virtual reality and virtual worlds and can be used ambiguous preventing confusion if for example virtual world is being used in relation to a digital space such as Second Life. In the 1980s researchers at NASA’s Ames Research Lab used the term virtual environment to describe an interface that allowed the user to enter a computer simulated scene through one of their virtual reality head mounted displays (Sherman and Craig 17). An interface occurs where two or more information sources come face-to-face, a remnant of the Greek word prosópon (Waite 56). The interface is therefore less an object but can perceived as a nexus between spaces (Farman 64). The Oculus Rift platform, with its layers of hard and- software, can for example be perceived as an interface to –one of the key understandings for this platform study (62)– cyberspace.

5.1 Cyberspace

Cyberspace is a term popularized by William Gibson in his novel Neuromancer where he describes it as:

A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding. (41).

Although the concept of cyberspace is not the same as the virtual, it is however fundamentally woven in the history and use of virtual reality (Sherman and Craig 17). Made possible 26 particularly by internet-mediated communication, cyberspace represented the ‘utopian’ virtual location for its users, a placeless-nes realm without imposed rules (Castells 385). It functions as a separate world freed from physical constraints (Rogers The end of the Virtual 2), enabling its inhabitants to take on their ‘own’ online identity and communicate. Without its regard to physical geography, cyberspace enables users interconnect globally and can be seen as a place people inhabit (Farman 45). One of the first ways to interact in cyberspace was the computerized Bulletin Boards System. Later on, tabletop games such as Dungeons and Dragons inspired the creation of the first text based video games called Multi User Dungeons (MUDs) (59), which soon developed into chatrooms, forums and blogging sites (like LiveJournal, launched in 1999). Not long after that, the first social online games such as Ultima Online in 1997 and EverQuest in 1999 took off, which built on the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game genre (MMORPG). Eventually, one of the most extensive ways to interact in cyberspace came from a controversial MMORPG called Second Life (60). Launched in 2003 –around the same time as social networking sites such as Facebook– it was created to provide virtual spaces for people to interact trough avatars. However, where Second Life enabled users to manifest themselves through avatars in the ideology of cyberspace, Facebook on the other hand is tightly connected to our ‘real’ identity (Facebook Helpcentrum). Making the application of the term cyberspace to Facebook and its products and technologies questionable.

5.2 Avatar: interacting through a virtual body

One of the key notions of cyberspace, that you can be perceived as whoever or whatever you want, was one of the strengths Second Life brought with it through the use of avatars. When thinking about how social life is created online, and how communication takes place, the avatar is currently the most prevalent virtual representation of the user (Taylor 41). Generally, an avatar is a virtual-body and forms the graphical representation of the user or the users alter ego or character, but profile pictures and usernames are often considered as avatars as well. This means that –even with the Oculus Rift–an avatar has to be created in order to have a virtual-body to move around in virtual environments (Laurel 3), and communicate through body language, something that Facebook considers important for the Oculus Rift as a communication platform. According to Slater and Wilbur an avatar of the user in virtual reality increases immersion and help ground the user in the virtual reality experience in comparison with displaying the user without a virtual-body (14). This means that the only camera is the participant’s sensorium and that any other point of view will not benefit the experience of virtual reality, making it a first-person medium (Laurel 3). Heeter seems to acknowledge this, 27 by explaining that the avatar has a positive effect on the experience of perception. The virtual- body can mimic the movement of the body of the user in the physical world and displays this movement on the body in the virtual environment. This mimicking of body (parts) can only be achieved if input devices such as the Oculus touch controllers are being used, which transfer hand movement into the virtual environment. The user therefore perceives the body to be his or hers as the brain often fails to differentiate between computerized characters and human beings (Bailenson and Blascovich). When avatars are customizable they can change self-esteem and social self-perception (Kaplan 62). Taller avatars can make people behave more confidently; attractive ones can make them more social (Bailenson and Blascovich). However, not all avatars might have these benefits, as Facebook wants to create a ‘real life’ representation of the user with their Social VR demo. Despite this, one of the challenges Facebook’s Social VR team is working on involve communicating through body language. The avatar forms an essential component in this since, after all, it is hard to convey meaning through body language without a body.

6 Communication through body language

Although a great deal of computer mediated communication is done verbally and Facebook’s Social VR team places great emphasis on voice, with the Oculus Rift Facebook places emphasis on another form of communication (Newsroom, F8). Nonverbal communication, and specifically face-to-face communication, is often revered to as the first known method of interaction known to all humans and is one the key methods through which people can communicate through the Oculus Rift for Facebook. From the day a human is born, nonverbal channels such as touching and reading facial cues are used and are one of the primary forms of communication (Palmer 282). Albert Mehrabia Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California has become known for his book Silent Messages from 1971 about the 7%-38%-55% rule, for the relative impact of words, tone of voice, and body language when speaking. According to him, 55% of the impact of communicating is being conceived through body language. Although verbal forms of communication can offer complex details and information, the most intimate messages are often carried out by tone of voice, facial expressions or body movement. Individuals may for instance nod with their heads if they agree to something, lean in to give a sense of involvement or cross their arms if they are reluctant creating a closed posture (Pease 58). Many theorist and researchers involved in computer mediated communication, generally acknowledge face-to-face communication to be the ideal form of interpersonal communication since it is learned and practiced throughout the lifetimes of humans (Palmer 290). In Virtually There, Lanier describes how he is a frequent but reluctant user of videoconferencing. According to Lanier, human interaction has both verbal and nonverbal elements and videoconferencing seems to fail at effectively performing the latter. He continues to explain that it is nearly impossible to make proper eye contact and users are unable to position themselves relative to another having no clear way to direct attention, approval or disapproval (1). The answer to this problem, was a product called ‘Reality Built for Two’ that allowed participants to share a virtual environment through a virtual reality head mounted display and the VPL data glove input device. This enabled the users to have verbal and nonverbal face-to-face communication with another user in the virtual environment. Their bodies were represented by an avatar, mimicking their movement. Even though Lanier saw the limitations of video conferencing, current day Skype video calls are not any better, and on Facebook you can only hear and see nonverbal messages such as emoticons or other people’s profile pictures (Knapp, et al. 7). Although the Oculus Rift does not yet support eye tracking it (through the tracking of the user’s head position and angle) does enable users to focus their gaze on specific objects, simulating eye contact. One of the benefits that Facebook might therefore have with the Oculus Rift is that virtual reality will provide the traditional benefits of 29 computer mediated communication by bringing people together across space and time and will, in addition, enable users to have real-time face-to-face communication, including those important non-verbal cues. Eventually, the Oculus Rift might even create a hyper-real communication environment, where, instead of our naturally acquired communication skills, we are using newer unknown forms of communication.

6.1 Post-symbolic Communication

The idea of hyper-real communication has been discussed by Lanier in an interview with Scientific American in 1997. Hyper-real communication or post-symbolic communication as Lanier calls it, might, according to him, eventually enable people to invent new forms of language or even something else entirely.

It's a new way to communicate, where people would directly create a shared world by programming it, by modeling it in real time, as opposed to merely using words, the intermediaries that we have to describe things. So it's like cutting out the middleman of words, and finding a new form of communication where you directly create shared reality--real-time, waking-state, improvised dreaming. (Lanier qtd. in Scientific American)

Although I find Lanier’s vision for the future of communication to be intriguing, Facebook shows that what they have in mind for the Oculus Rift as their new communication platform will initially be aimed at connecting people and create the ability to communicate through body language as well as voice using today’s technologies (Newsroom, F8). To see what the Oculus Rift makes possible as a communication platform, for the remainder of this research, I will therefore delve deeper into the hard- and software of the Oculus Rift and its developments.

7 Methodology

To research the Oculus Rift as a communication platform more thoroughly, this research will make use of parts of the platform study methodology developed by Bogost and Montfort for the MIT Platform Studies series, leaning towards their first publication in that series Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. Although they deliberately left the methodology of platform studies open and avoid prescribing a theoretical or critical approach (Apperley and Parikka 2), with Racing the Beam, Montfort and Bogost laid the foundations for a theoretical framework which they refer to as the ‘most neglected’ level in analyses of digital media: the platform (Leorke 257). In Rebranding the platform: The limitations of “platform studies” Dale Leorke argues that even though platform studies are only a relatively new concept, the MIT Platform Studies series relies too much on the framework developed by Montfort and Bogost in Racing the Beam. This research will therefore include additional approaches to the original MIT platform studies series framework.

7.1 Platform studies

According to Gillespie, a platform, from a computational perspective, must serve as an infrastructure to build applications on. Platforms can therefore vary from computer hardware, to software applications (349) or in the case of the Oculus Rift a marriage between the two. The goal of platform studies is to examine the relationships between the hard- and software design of a computing system (platform) and the creative works produced on that system (Montfort and Bogost 2). It allows for the investigation of how particular aspects of the platform influence the work done on and for the platform (4). Because of this, researchers are often under the impression that a platform study is all about technical details and, that you for example, have to know how to program to understand the platform (an ability not all media studies researchers possess). Although some technical understanding can be useful, platform studies mainly focus on the relation between technical details and culture. A part of this research will therefore consist of a technical investigation into the computing technologies of the Oculus Rift and its peripherals, and explore how they can be understood in relation to what Facebook calls their ‘new communication platform’. It will thereby create awareness and discussion of how the platforms exists in a context of culture and society (Apperley and Parikka 2). The Oculus Rift apparatus is fabricated in a way Gillespie observes as “technologies increasingly submerge their workings” which is done to both increase production efficiency and to prevent altering of the apparatus material structure (Gillespie 239). Although, for 31 example, the software development kit (SDK) of the Oculus platform is ‘relatively’ open, the apparatus’ inner workings are not. For users, the content that is created and translated from the moment they plug the Rift in their computer, is a mystical affair. Since I was unable to research the actual apparatus, this research will make use of paratexts and secondary media to explore its inner workings.

7.2 Paratexts and secondary media

Apperley and Parikka, explain that it is important that “the platform must have produced and distributed sufficient volumes of software and other secondary materials to create an archive which allows for research into a stably constructed platform” (6). Unfortunately, the consumer version of the Oculus Rift has just started shipping to consumers and although the concept of the medium predates the internet, the platform iterations releasing in 2016 are still relatively unexplored. To be able to research the Oculus Rift platform without the actual apparatus, this research will make use of sources other than the direct observation of the hard- and software of the Oculus Rift to investigate its hard- and software design in relation to a new communication platform. Besides direct sources as for example the documentations provided by Oculus, secondary media such as technology blogs Wired and Ars Technica will be consulted since they have good reputations on the reviewing of new hard- and software technologies and their influence on culture and society. Part of these secondary media will include ‘paratexts’ and everyday practices of the community of users, which are unofficial texts that record and archive unofficial histories of the platform and provide a variety of perspectives on individual and collective encounters (Genette 262). The inclusion of everyday practices of the community of users were suggested by Apperley and Parikka to enrich the platform studies methodological framework (6). Secondary media can provide an understanding of the platform; its hard- and software design as they will enable me to analyze how the Oculus Rift can be positioned as a new communication platform, without having access to the consumer version of the Oculus Rift or its software. In addition, secondary media may provide information about how Oculus’ users and developers have perceived Facebook’s positioning of the Oculus Rift as primarily a gaming device in 2012, to a communication platform in 2014.

7.3 Layered through hard- and software

Platforms like the Oculus Rift are layered from hardware through operating systems and into other software layers and in addition connect to input devices such as controllers (Table 2.). This research will make use of Laurel’s ‘core characteristics of Virtual Reality’ (4) as an analytical framework and will investigate both hard- and software layers and create an 32 understanding if and/or how the layers enable the Oculus Rift to be positioned as a communication platform. First, I discuss the operating system which manages the hard- and software processes of the Oculus Rift (Oculus Documentation). Although the operating system forms an essential part of the medium to operate, this research will not delve any deeper into its workings as it is already extensively reviewed by others (Pierce, Bright). The reason why Oculus chose the operating system Microsoft Windows 10, will however be touched on briefly since it has been a controversial point of discussion within the Oculus community.

Oculus Rift Platform Layers Oculus Rift (Hardware): Virtual reality head mounted display, input devices. Operating System: Windows 10 SDK (Development): API’s, Documentation, Demo, etc. Game Engines (Development): Unreal Engine, Unity game, etc. Software: Setup, Home, Games, Applications, etc.

Table. 3 Oculus Rift Platform Layers.

Second, I will look at which developments for the Oculus Rift as a communication platform are made possible via the Software Development Kit (SDK) and the application programing interface (API), which are software development tools that enable developers to develop software applications and games through applications or supported game engines (Montfort 3). In addition to the operating systems and SDK’s, the Oculus Rift requires setup software that provides the user with the installation and processing of hardware and the downloading and automatic updating of games and other software applications. The Oculus Home software provides users with integrated communicative services such as a friend list, chat and group creation. Although these actions are generally not mediated through the Oculus Rift apparatus, I will however discuss these services since they enable a form of connectedness within the Oculus platform. Third, I analyze how the Oculus Rift apparatus and input devices differentiate compared to two-dimensional displays and how this substantially influences immersion and presence and enables Facebook to work on challenges such as “the ability to interact with the environment and communicating through body language as well as voice” (Newsroom, F8). Finally, I will explore the case study of Facebook’s Social VR demo and analyze how it relates to concepts and characteristics discussed in the previous chapters. 33

8 The platform

8.1 Operating system

When the Oculus Rift development kit first launched it supported both Windows, Mac OSX and Linux natively (Kickstarter, Oculus campaign). The backers of the Kickstarter project were promised that the Rift would continue to support these platforms in the future. It was therefore surprising that with the introduction of the second development kit, Oculus cancelled support for Mac OSX and Linux, limiting their users to Windows (Dove). Oculus Chief Architect Atman Binstock explained in an interview with Ars Technica in May 2015, that "our development for OSX and Linux has been paused in order to focus on delivering a high quality consumer-level VR experience at launch across hardware, software, and content on Windows. We want to get back to development for OS X and Linux, but we don’t have a timeline." (Orland, Oculus Founder). However, a year later in May 2016, Oculus Co-Founder Palmer Lucky told Shacknews that Oculus support will only come to Max OSX "if they ever release a good computer”. The Oculus Rift requires hefty computers to provide an enjoyable experience. Even a $6.000 Mac Pro with their top-of-the-line AMD FirePro D700 graphic card still does not match the recommended settings Oculus requires for their Rift headset. But what does this mean? Except for the fact that Oculus lets down a group of developers that were under the impression that the Oculus Rift would get Mac OSX and Linux support, in addition, Oculus limits the use of the Rift to the Windows platform. Although the supported Windows platform- usage (59,12%) outnumbers its competitors Mac OSX (9%) and Linux (1.43%)(Statista, Computer Operating Systems) substantially, it does raise the question if this will influence virtual reality as a new communication platform. Kickstarter backers feared that the acquisition by Facebook would influence the integrity of the platform and started lashing out in the Kickstarter campaign’s comment section:

We wanted it to move forward - just not with Facebook. If it had been Valve or another company similar to Valve, I don't think you would have had as many upset people.” (Phoenix, Kickstarter backer)

Thanks for selling us out Palmer! You couldn't have chosen a worse company. Why not also teaming up with the NSA... Sadly I supported this company. A mistake which will not happen again. (Philipp Struchtrup, Kickstarter backer)

Many of the original backers were promised an open platform where they could develop for Linux, Mac OSX and Windows, instead after the acquisition by Facebook, many of them feared Facebook’s walled garden mentality and governing of the actions and behaviours of their users.

8.1.1 Open-source

“What happened with the concept of being open? The main reason why I supported is that you promised Linux support and to be open in order to start a revolution. After taking the money, instead of revolution I just see the same slow and boring progress of a normal large company. At the moment Oculus is by far my least favorite device because you lost your innovative DNA. (Guilherme Hartmann, Kickstarter backer)

Even though the platform is open source and developers are free to use, modify, and distribute the Oculus VR Rift SDK, with the launch of the Oculus Rift, it soon turned out that there are some restrictions to it that raised eyebrows within the community. With open-source software, people are often allowed to use, modify and distribute the software but under certain restrictions (Kelty 2). Very early pre-Kickstarter writing from Luckey indicated that he wanted the Rift to be ‘completely’ open source instead of it being distributed under a closed license. However, almost immediately after the acquisition by Facebook in 2014, Oculus changed its Software Development Kit License agreement. As Kickstarter backer Guilherme Hartmann’s quote shows, backers did not take the acquisition by Facebook lightly. When Oculus changed their SDK License Agreement in 2014, one of the most striking inclusions in there was the fact that the Rift SDK cannot be used to interface with unapproved commercial virtual reality devices. /r/oculus subreddit user CoderCandy believes that this license “does not go with the ideology of spreading VR to the world.” But why does Oculus/Facebook not want the Rift to interface with unapproved commercial virtual reality devices? Is it because they want to strengthen their position in the market? Although more research is needed here, it looks like history repeats itself, just as with the acquisition of Instagram by Facebook when “the buyout effectively disrupted Instagram’s integration with Twitter” (Goggin 10), Facebook seems to want to be one step ahead of their competitors. In the internet article Just how “open” is the future of PC virtual reality?, Ars Technica editor Kyle Orland jokes that “In a way, making a PC game that only works on the Oculus Rift is as ridiculous as making a PC game that only works on Dell monitors.”. He is referring to the fact that Oculus, which claims to be open, is developing proprietary Rift software (such as the video game Lucky’s Tale) which is tightly integrated with its own hardware and only works on the Rift (Orland, Just how “open”). Although this does not mean that the Oculus will go the way of a console style future (where everything is being controlled by the manufacturer), it 35 does raise the question if some future applications of the Oculus Rift will only be able to connect to another Oculus Rift or also to devices and platforms made competitors. After all, for the Oculus Rift as a communication platform to only be able to communicate with another Oculus Rift on Windows 10, would be just as remarkable as an iPhone that cannot make a phone call to an Android phone.

8.2 SDKs, APIs and Oculus Home, connecting users and developers

While the Oculus VR Rift SDK is released under a restricted open license, it still forms an essential part of the platform. The Oculus VR Rift SDK is a programming package that enables its programmers to develop applications for the Oculus Rift. Generally, SDK’s (including that of the Rift) can be downloaded for free to encourage developers to make use of the SDK’s programming language and to support them in their process by offering them a set of API’s. An API enables software developers other than Oculus to design products that are powered by their services. It is essentially a set of programming instructions that enables software programs to interact with each other through a set of pre-arranged rules (Bucher 2). These rules specify what the API is allowed to give and/or receive and define how two applications communicate with each other. The platform API developed by Oculus for the Rift enables developers to directly control the performance profile of their application without confirmation from the Oculus servers. If developers make use of the Oculus API, their applications make API calls that are routed through the Oculus API which enable developers and Oculus to push updates quickly over the globally distributed network of servers (Oculus Platform SDK). This means that making use of the Oculus platform API will provide the developers with a global infrastructure. Ensuring that all devices are updated simultaneously, a crucial part for a communication platform if they want the devices to be able to interact and work with the same software. Although a SDK in its simplest form can consist of just merely an API, the Oculus Rift SDK includes APIs, programming tools and a documentation that enable developers to develop software applications and features through a suite of tools for the Oculus Rift platform. On the Oculus developer website Oculus states that in a connected world, it is important to be able to find your friends (Platform SDK). Enabling users to create a sense of presence of other users is thus a key aspect of the Oculus platform. They therefore offer users and developers to respectively connect with other users on the platform, and provide information about these connections through the platform API. On the Oculus Home, users can ‘add friends’ by entering their usernames, they can send each other ‘messages’, enter ‘rooms’ (which are virtual places where they can come to meet, chat, start games or share experiences), and make use of ‘leaderboards’ and ‘matchmaking’ for multiplayer games. Developers can use the platform API 36 to integrate these connectivity tools in their application or game, but their application is responsible for the rendering and displaying of this information. In addition to platform API integration, developers can make use of the Oculus Forums, where Oculus professionals and community members can give support and feedback. These integrated development environments serve as the central programming interface. Although the Oculus Rift SDK allows developers to program for it directly, the Oculus Rift SDK is, according to Oculus, designed to integrated as easy as possible with supported game engines and applications enabling developers to use more extensive methods of developing (Oculus PC SDK).

8.3 Game Engines

Even though this research is conducted in relation to the Oculus Rift as a communication platform, the Rift was first and foremost designed to be the first truly immersive virtual reality headset for video games (Kickstarter Campaign). Besides developing for the Oculus directly in the C/C++ programming language, often game engines are used as a more extensive means of developing. Oculus currently works with Epic and Unity to integrate the Oculus Rift with the Unreal engine and Unity game engine. These engines support the integration of the Oculus SDK and are frameworks for the creation and development of videogames (Oculus Documentation). When the virtual reality pioneers developed the first head mounted displays game engines did not yet exist. Back then, virtual reality software was highly specialized to the hardware which it used (Gregory 3). Although some pieces of software could be reused, generally they had to build new applications from the ground up. The term game engine arose in the mid-1990s in reference to first person shooter video games such as DOOM (Gregory 11). Today, video games are a multi-billion-dollar industry and have outgrown the film industry as the number four industry in the entertainment sector (Statista, Video Game Industry). Because of this, software engines were created to standardize development and enable developers to create games for multiple platforms. While game engines vary widely in the detail of their architecture, virtually all game engines contain core components such as a rendering engine for graphics, a physics engine or collision detection, sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, localization support, scene graph, and may even include video support for cinematics (13). The main advantage of game engines is, that they enable developers to reuse software components and to easily integrate or remove them. This means that instead of programming a game from the ground up, with the use of software engines, tasks such as interfacing with SDKs and APIs or creating new physics components do not have to be re-designed every time they create a new game. This significantly increases production efficiency and makes it easier to update existing 37 software, something which also benefits software created for the Oculus Rift as a communication platform. Although the foremost task of game engines is the development of videogames, its usage can also be extended for the development of software applications such as Facebook’s Social VR demo for the Oculus Rift. Characteristics such as spatialized audio, the rendering of stereoscopic images and affordances for depth perception and motion parallax, are all integrated in the engines to increase workflow for developers. However, with Social VR, Facebook seems to be offering a framework through which the user (without the use of programming tools or game engines) can display and share the content for the environment they are in on the Oculus apparatus.

8.4 Hardware, the Oculus Rift apparatus

Understanding the Oculus Rift as a communication platform involves technical investigation into how the computing technologies work. At the moment of writing, virtual reality head mounted displays can generally be split into two groups: wireless and tethered. Tethered head mounted displays are connected to a PC or console through a cable making use of powerful hardware, while wireless head mounted displays often make use of smartphones for both the display and processing power of the virtual environment (Metz, This is the). With the acquisition of Oculus, Facebook not only acquired the developer of hardware products but also the developers of the software platform on which the Rift works. As Facebook showed in their ‘10-year technology roadmap’, this software platform supports in addition to the Oculus rift, also the Samsung Gear VR; a mobile container developed in collaboration with Samsung for their latest series of Galaxy Smartphones (Metz, This is the). This device, however, due to inferior hardware, does not support all software that is released on the Oculus platform including Facebook’s Social VR demo. In the next chapters, I will therefore discuss how parts of the hardware of the Oculus Rift contribute to entering “a completely immersive computer- generated environment” and “feel like you're actually present in another place with other people” (Zuckerberg, Oculus VR). According to Zuckerberg, “people who try” the Oculus Rift “say it's different from anything they've ever experienced in their lives” (Zuckerberg, Oculus VR), which brings up the question, different from what?

8.4.1 Three-dimensional perception

In the book Bodies in code: Interfaces with digital media, Mark Hansen explains that virtual reality differentiates itself from for example two-dimensional screens, because of its increased immersion, which is related to the transition between two- and three-dimensional spaces. “Although we see the world in three-dimensions, throughout history we’ve only been able to depict it in two.” (Hansen 1). Many applications like video games and digital AutoCAD productions have been created with three-dimensional characteristics but are being visualized on two-dimensional displays. Stereopsis, which describes the way in which we see two views of the world simultaneously by combining each view of the human eyes to create a three- dimensional stereoscopic image (Howard, Rogers 2), generates according to Hansen a more natural three-dimensional perception and is necessary to create a complete surround environment (Laurel 2). Humans use their bodies to interact with objects, they move their bodies or turn their heads to see better and they have acquired a consistent set of expectations throughout a lifetime of experience in three-dimensional spaces (Hansen 27). When we look at Facebook’s social media platform, most, if not all of its applications, are designed to be displayed on two-dimensional screens. This means that with the Oculus Rift, instead of peering in through a narrow window, the three-dimensional properties and design of the apparatus can create what Zuckerberg calls a ‘different experience’ compared to what for example two- dimensional screens do. However, a three dimensional view alone is not enough to create convincing virtual reality (3).

8.4.2 Motion tracking a complete surround environment

To increase immersion and create a convincing virtual reality experience, the Oculus Rift enables users to look around by its head tracking function. By tracking the user’s head’s position and angle and changing the image to reflect their new view, the Oculus Rift simulates an edge-free, spherical screen that surrounds the user in 360-degrees up and down and side to side (Orland, The Ars Review). This full range of vision where users are able to turn around, look up and down and see a complete virtual environment (Fig. 11), enables Oculus’ Social VR team to develop software for the platform that lets people interact and communicate through body language and specifically face-to-face communication. To be able to achieve this, the Oculus Rift’s uses infrared LEDs embedded in the headset, which allow an included IR sensor 39 to track the headset in space. This technique enables the headset to track the user’s motion 360-degrees and enables them to crouch or lean in to get a better perspective and allow the tracking of the participant’s direction of motion distinct from the direction of gaze (Laurel 2). This ability to physically move in space is what Krueger felt to be the measure of immersion (Krueger). But, as I will point, physical movement also creates certain challenges for developers.

Fig. 11 Oculus Rift Headset motion. (Oculus Documentation)

8.4.3 Spatialized audio

During the F8 conference in April 2016, the Social VR team indicated that they are still working on challenges such as voice (Newsroom, F8), something which is drastically influenced by the ability to physically move in space. As virtual reality head mounted displays are an immersive medium, the mind needs to be in a continual suspension of disbelief (Cruz-Neira et al. 65). This can be done through the tracking of a person’s location in space, but as the Oculus Rift Documentation explains, there are fundamental concepts to be followed in audio to create a persuasive virtual reality experience. Since audio plays and important role in the cognitive perception of existing in space by the user, it will contribute to the user’s sense of immersion (Laurel 3). Audio has always been an important part of immersion into virtual environments and has been part of the first arcade games which outed bleeps and bloops to give an extra dimension to gaming until the 5.1 surround sound systems arrived we are using today (Karen 6). Traditionally, recordings have been made using two methods: mono and stereo which use one or two microphones to record the sound (Eargle 184). With techniques like surround sound serval microphones are used to record the sounds from five or more directions (243). However, these sounds are always coming from a stationary direction. As I discussed in the previous chapter, the Oculus Rift enables the users to move their heads freely. This means that if the sound comes from one direction the user will perceive a disorienting effect once he or she turns their head. Therefore, with the development of the Oculus Rift an old trick, once again, has been dusted off to increase the sense of immersion. In 1933, AT&T Bell Laboratories brought spatialized 40 audio to the Chicago World’s Fair. A method to record audio as it is perceived by the human ear. According to Richard Marks, senior director of research and development at Sony Computer Entertainment America. "3D audio adds to the feeling of presence that we strive so hard to achieve with the visuals in VR", “When sound is perceived to come from the same direction as a visual stimulus, the credibility of the virtual experience is greatly increased. While purely visual VR experiences can be made, adding 3D audio greatly magnifies the impact and depth of a VR experience." (Schnipper). Unlike the rendering of the virtual environment, spatialized audio is not limited to the field of view of the user, and can be rendered to give a complete 360-degree experience and forms according to Laurel a core characteristic of virtual reality (3). In verbal communication for example, it is desirable to be able to locate a sound source. Imagine, sitting in a room where people are scattered across the room having conversations in small groups, not being able to indicate were sound is coming from both distance and direction (important for the volume of the individual sound sources). This will result in a disorienting effect, as if you are having a phone call with 20 or 30 people at the same time, and still try to focus on that one person, that in virtual reality, you can actually see standing in front of you.

8.4.4 Natural gesture and movement

The moment you see that person standing in front of you and being able to indicate from which direction sound is coming, the experience of social presence increases (Witmer and Singer 267), which is one of the key challenges Facebook is working on with their Social VR team (Newsroom, F8). However, being able to actually see that person standing in front of you means that you have to be fully immersed in the virtual experience to create convincing presence. This of course has a downside, since as soon as users put on the Oculus Rift they are unable to see their keyboard, mouse, gamepad or monitor which creates an isolation from the outside environment (Witmer and Siger 227). Interaction with these devices therefore has to be done by touch alone. Although this is possible, using for instance a keyboard by touch alone can be very difficult and result for the user to be unable to find individual keys. According to Frank Biocca and Mark R. Levy, to create a powerful virtual illusion, the computer must be able to sense the location and actions of the user's body in a virtual environment (97). Unlike the PowerGloves from VPL back in the 1990s, the Oculus Rift makes use of physical controllers called Oculus Touch.

Fig. 12 Oculus Touch controllers. (Oculus Touch)

Physical controls are those that control the virtual environment via a real-world apparatus. Because of the interface's real-world existence, the participant receives haptic feedback from pressing buttons and performing other actions which is so often already a part of modern games (Sherman and Craig 288). These controllers work as extensions of the hand, and allow the hand to travel with the user to the virtual environment (Fig. 12). This is generally done to give the user a method of interacting with the world and in multiparticipant spaces hand gestures can also provide methods of nonverbal communication between participants. (Sherman and Craig 90). The controller detects, for example, if the user waves or gives a “thumbs up” and allows them to grasp and move objects to interact in the virtual environment. According to Luckey, the aim of the Touch is to create an extension of your own hands. When using the device, you will see “your own hands” in the virtual environment (Metz, Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s). The Touch controllers enable users to make use of the skills they have acquired from their interaction with the physical world. These are skills that they have learned from birth and are evolutionary coded in the operation of their perceptual and motor systems (Biocca and Levy 98). The more natural the action the greater the sense of presence (Laurel 3). Laurel therefore explains that traditional videogame controllers that do not track the user’s movement are not acceptable for immersive virtual reality (3). According to Zuckerberg, the Oculus Touch controllers will “enhance the VR experience and allow people to communicate more naturally in VR through intuitive hand movements and gestures.” (FB Q415). As I discussed in chapter 6 on ‘Communication through body language’, 42 non-verbal communication therefore forms an important component for the Oculus Rift to become a new communication platform, and can for the Oculus Platform at the moment only be achieved through the Touch controllers. People use their hands to convey meaning and support the things they say. These physical motions are translated into the virtual environment through these input options (Sherman and Craig 267), and differentiate the way in how people communicate from for example Facebook’s social network where texts and images set the tone. While it is desirable to be able to physically move around with the Oculus Rift for it to become a new communication platform, the Rift, in its current form, is limited by its sensors, which only allow for s person to sit or stand instead of physically navigating the environment.

8.4.5 The ability to physically move in space

In virtual environments there are endless ways of navigating: walking, driving, skiing, flying or even sailing through a world. This navigating generally involves two separate components: travel and wayfinding (Sherman and Craig 332). Travel describes the way in which users move through space, where wayfinding enables the user to know where they are and where they are going. This combined effort is also known as navigation and allows the users to physically move and identify themselves in an (virtual) environment increasing immersion and presence. With the Oculus Rift and Facebook’s Social VR demo, most of the time locomotion will be carried out through a form of input rather than actually standing up and walking around (Oculus Documentation). This means that the user is often stationary: either sitting or standing. As Oculus users are unable to see their surrounding when they wear the Oculus Rift, Oculus advices users to sit, to prevent them from bumping into object. Because of this, traveling through virtual environment with the Oculus Rift is done by the use of the Touch controllers which can cause simulator sickness (Laurel 6). In contrast to motion sickness –which is caused by the physical movement of the body– simulator sickness is the lack of physical movement while the mind is tricked in that it is moving through the virtual environment. This lack of movement causes the user to become disorientated or nauseous. According to the Oculus Documentation, there are several other problems that can lead to simulator sickness but they can mostly be mitigated by conducting good interface design. In Understanding Virtual Reality William Sherman and Alan Craig explain that although physical movement is the most natural form of movement is does not have to be the only appropriate interface for most experiences. People are capable of learning new interfaces as long as they are easy to learn (344). This means that an experienced user of the Oculus Rift will be less affected by motion sickness in their Social VR application than less experienced users. This does however mean that the interface of the Social VR demo is designed in such a way that it avoids too much rapid movement. 43

Therefore, the simplest way to travel without inducing simulator sickness and increasing the sense of immersion is what many researchers such as Hansen, Biocca & Levy and Sherman & Craig note: physical locomotion. By making use of the natural acquired capabilities of the human sensorium, physical locomotion provides users with a sense of proprioceptic feedback that helps give a sense of the relationships of objects in the virtual environment (Sherman and Craig 349). Although the Oculus Rift is not yet capable of room scale virtual reality (Oculus’ founder Palmer Luckey indicated that it will work fine eventually) Oculus’ main competitor the HTC Vive is (Fig. 13) (Lang).

Fig. 13 HTC Vive Roomscale VR. (The Lab)

Room scale virtual reality is designed in such a way that larger, full-body motions, particularly walking around, are completely trackable by the sensors (note that the Oculus Rift currently only has one sensor) (Orland, The Ars Review). This means that a user can for example walk away from a group of people or lean in, to better understand somebody.

9 Case Study

9.1 Software, social applications

With the release of the Oculus Rift consumer edition 2 months ago, Oculus has officially released 45 games on its Oculus Store. When analyzing the store, it is divided into 8 categories consisting of: ‘Featured (5)’, ‘Games (45)’, ‘Entertainment (7)’, ‘Apps (8)’, ‘Top Selling (10)’, ‘Early Access (11)’, ‘Concepts (5)’ and ‘Browse All (76)’. From the 76 applications in total, 8 offer ‘multiplayer’ capabilities, meaning that at the moment around 90 percent of the applications in the store are focused on ‘single user’. From these 8 applications only 2 applications, AltspaceVR and vTime which are third-party developments, offer communicative capabilities such as “communicating through body language as well as voice”, which Facebook deem important for their Social VR demo (Newsroom, F8). However, these applications are categorized under ‘Early Access’ which are, according to Oculus, playable VR experiences that are still in development, they offer an inside look at VR experiences in the making and request you to provide feedback to the developers on the forums (Oculus Store). The lack of ‘social’ applications seems to be in line with Facebook’s strategy, that Oculus’ focus is going to be gaming in the beginning (FB Q415). However, as Zuckerberg pointed out during the Facebook F8 conference in January, the main reason why Facebook is interested in Oculus is because it sees Oculus as a ‘social’ company, that will enable people to interact in new ways (FB Q415). For Facebook, ‘social’ might be more than the human connectedness ‘Early Access’ applications such as AltspaceVR and vTime offer. I will therefore explore the case study of Facebook’s Social VR demo, as it is the first development Facebook made in relation to the Oculus Rift as a communication platform.

9.2 Facebook Social VR

Ever since Facebook acquired Oculus, Mark Zuckerberg is making clear that besides the initial purpose to enrich the experience in the gaming industry, the Oculus Rift is going to be a new communication platform (FB Q415). At the F8 Facebook Developer Conference on April 13 2016, Facebook for the first time showed a virtual reality demo regarding the connectivity of two or more people in a virtual environment called ‘Facebook Social VR’. According to Facebook, virtual reality has the potential to be more social than any other platform. The Social VR team is exploring how people can connect and share using the Oculus Rift and future prospects are being researched as Facebook thinks that virtual reality is going to evolve in an increasingly important computing platform. Particular challenges that the Social VR team is 45 working on at the moment, consist of “combining a sense of presence with the ability to interact with the environment and communicating through body language as well as voice”. During the demonstration, Facebook’s CTO, Mike Schroepfer, stood on stage in San Francisco holding in his hands a pair of Oculus Touch controllers while he was wearing an Oculus Rift. Thirty miles away, Michael Booth a member of Facebook’s Social VR team, who was wearing his own headset at the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park California, met up with Schroepfer in a virtual augmentation of London. By geographically separating Schroepfer and Booth during the demonstration, Facebook subtly emphasized the networked communications of the Oculus Rift which enabled the two to share the same virtual space. Booth showed how he and Schroepfer could travel through a series of 360-degree photographs in London. Booth welcomed Schroepfer exuberantly upon entering the first virtual space. “Welcome to Saint Pancras station London, we can go there together” (Booth). Schroepfer immediately pointed to the clock hanging on the wall of the station, the physical motion of his hands tracked by the touch controllers and visualized in the virtual environment (Fig. 14); “Wow, check out that clock, that is a really sweet clock” (Schroepfer). “Yeah, it’s a fancy clock, made by the Dent company.” Booth replied, while also pointing at the clock to support his answer. “They have been doing that for about 300 years, same clock as in Big Ben” (Booth).

Fig. 14 Michael Booth’s avatar pointing at the clock in Saint Pancras station London. (Newsroom, F8)

The first thing that stands out is that when Booth welcomed Schroepfer he emphasized the fact that they can visit these places together. When Zuckerberg announced the acquisition of Oculus in March 2014, he indicated that through the Oculus Rift “you feel like you're actually present in another place”. It is therefore not surprisingly that one of the challenges the Oculus VR team is working on is creating a sense of presence, as it is the subjective experience of being in another place. It is however social presence, the feeling of presence in a place created by the presence of another user, that is according to Oculus researcher Yaser Sheikh the long-term goal of the Social VR team. They try to achieve this by replicating reality (or simulation as Heim would put it) and make both the environment and the users’ subtlest cues such as expressions and gestures indistinguishable from real-life experiences. Although these features were not yet implemented in the demo held in April 2016, Facebook is already experimenting with head mounted camera’s that can be attached to the Oculus Rift that register for example mouth movement, so that if a person talks his or her lips actually move on their avatar. The avatars that represented Schroepfer and Booth however, were very roughly sculpted, and consisted of oversized heads and hands which clearly illustrated that ‘Social VR’ was just a demo to show what Facebook has in mind for social virtual reality. Sheikh explained that one of the key challenges at the moment is making the avatars feel as real as possible (Recode). The avatars used in the demonstration were far from real and were, because of their lack of customization, not comparable with the ones used in for example Second Life. But at Facebook, they are thinking of ways to make these avatars more personal with existing technologies. One example on how to accomplish this is using a mobile phone to scan a user’s face and head so they can have their “own self in there”. This seems to be in line with Facebook’s real-name policy which created much controversy in 2014 when drag queens, drag kings and transgender were forced to use their ‘real name’ instead of their drag name (Facebook). Although Facebook, since November 2015, does not require you to use your ‘legal name’ the new rule still officially requires the use of “authentic names” (Guardian). On Facebooks’ social platform in addition, it is also prohibited to pretend to be somebody else, a problematic affair if users want to create their own avatar, as some people prefer their avatar over their physical self in cyberspace (Bailenson and Blascovich). In an interview with Mashable, Facebook’s Product Manager and Business Lead Mike Beltzner was asked what the difference between Facebook Social VR and Second Life is. He explained that where in Second Life the purpose was to create new groups of friends and social interactions opposed to the ones you already have in the real world; Facebook only makes use of existing connections. Social VR, in addition, will connect users to Facebook’s social graph, which is a representation of the connection between users and the people and objects they interact with (Helmond 125). This means that even in virtual reality, Facebook enables you to 47 share the experiences you have every day with the people you know and objects you connect to. I think that because of this, the early ideas of cyberspace can no longer be applied to applications such as Facebook’s Social VR demo, as it requires you to connect with existing Facebook friends. In chapter 5 on cyberspace, I already indicated that I believe that the experiences on Facebook are increasingly dissolving into the practices of our everyday life. Social VR users cannot take up another identity, at least not without breaking the rules of Facebook, and from the looks of the Social VR demo, Facebook is motivating people to share places with other people where they have actually been themselves. Even though people cannot take up another identity, when the Social VR demo and Facebook’s social media platform are compared in relation to Kalplan and Haenlein’s ‘Classification of Social Media’, it becomes clear that by replicating real life encounters such as face-to-face communication through the use of avatars, the Social VR demo creates much more ‘Social presence/ Media richness’ than Facebook’s social platform or many of its other products.

Fig. 15 Facebook's Project Aquila. (Newsroom, F8)

The second thing that stands out was the fact that both Schroepfer and Booth were making extensive use of nonverbal communication. Every time the two spoke they looked each other in the eyes or used their hands to symbolize certain actions, making full use of the tracking abilities of both the headset and touch controllers. When Booth opened the third 360-degree photo they were transported to the space where Facebook's Project Aquila is being built, a solar powered drone which Facebook plans to use to provide internet access in remote parts of the 48 world (Fig. 15). A clearly impressed Schroepfer spread his arms to depict the sheer size of the plane “It’s amazing, I had no idea that it was so huge!” (Schroepfer). Enabling convincing actions like these is the goal of the Social VR team according to Sheikh. This is not surprising, as I discussed in chapter 6 on ‘Communication through body language’, since many theorist and researchers involved in computer mediated communication, generally acknowledge nonverbal communication to be the ideal form of interpersonal communication since it is learned and practiced throughout the lifetimes of humans. With Social VR, Facebook is extending its ways of communicating from mostly text, pictures and videos to communication through body language. As Facebook is a data driven company, this opens up entirely new forms of data gathering, something I will elaborate on further in the next chapter on ‘Data gathering and privacy’. In the demo both Schroepfer and Booth were able to look around the 360-degree photos from a rather stationary position. Most of the time locomotion will be carried out through a form of input rather than actually standing up and walking around with the Oculus Rift. Although Schroepfer was obviously standing on stage, the virtual environment they were standing in did not allow for much movability, indicating that it was still in line with the current Oculus operating guidelines of virtual reality in which you sit or stand. Even though the demonstration was based on a small virtual environment where the two of them could interact, the rest of the environment was made up of 360-degree immersive video, something which Brenda Laurel specifically points out to be a feature which -on its own- is not virtual reality because of its lack of the principle of action (1). The principle of action implies that a virtual reality user must have affordances for moving about in the scene, take action in the world, and perceive the consequences of taking action (3). The Facebook social VR demo, however, seems to lack the affordances for narrative construction, as the only thing the user can do in the demonstration is standing in the middle of, and navigation through, 360-degree immersive videos’. Virtual reality must possess certain design cues and affordances to encourage the users to, again, take action and make interesting choices which increases immersion and presence, something which is somewhat absent in the Facebook Social VR demo (3). This shows that Facebook wants to stay true to real experiences. But what is real in this sense? Since the virtual can be seen as a component of the experiencing of the real (Farman 22), it could be that Facebook wants its user to share experiences that they themselves can create with for example cameras, in this case simulating the physical world through 360-degree immersive video. According to Social VR product manager Mike Beltzner the reason for Facebook to create real life experiences is that they found out that if virtual reality applications feature game mechanics or enables people to play games, they take away the social experience. Even if games are played with other people "The more game-like it is, the less you interact." (Beltzner qtd. in Fast Company). Apparently for Facebook, the ‘social’ in 49

Social VR is about interaction. It therefore seems that Facebook is applying the same strategy to Social VR as they do to their social media platform. The ‘social’ in social media platform, according to Van Dijck, consists of a combination of human connectedness and automated forms of connectivity. With Social VR Facebook is essentially integrating parts of its platform in a virtual reality experience. When Schroepfer and Booth opened the last photo they were transported to Westminster Bridge right in front of Big Ben where Schroepfer noted that two people were taking a selfie; “Hey they are taking a selfie in front of Big Ben”, “You know what, I never really got a selfie in front of Big Ben” (Schroepfer). “Oh, I got a solution for that!” Booth replied. “another experiment we have been trying is the virtual selfie” (Booth). Booth picked up a selfie stick and made a series of photo’s that appeared on the table behind them (Fig. 16). The two were able to pick up the photos, hold them in their hands and choose which one they liked. Schroepfer picked out a photo and asked if that photo could be posted on Facebook. Booth explained that the only thing Schroepfer had to do was dropping the photo in the blue Facebook post office box behind him and it will get shared directly to his wall (Fig. 17). Social VR offers, besides connectedness, forms of automated connectivity such as the sharing of pictures and in the future may even enable users to Like someone else’s 360-degree photos or videos in Social VR.

Fig. 16 Michael Booth and Mike Schroepfer taking a virtual selfie. (Newsroom, F8)

In addition to traveling through London, Schroepfer and Booth payed some attention to the ability to create and manipulate objects they drew in the virtual environment which they could then share and wear (William and Sherman 50-368). Although these object were visible on the selfie they made, it is unclear if and how they could be shared with other people.

Fig. 17 Mike Schroepfer sharing the selfie on his Facebook wall. (Newsroom, F8)

With the Social VR demo, Facebook seems to stay true to Zuckerberg’s ideology of “sharing” and enabling “even more useful, entertaining and personal experiences” (Zuckerberg, Oculus VR). Facebook does however take a different path with their Social VR demo compared to the ‘characteristics of virtual reality’ Laurel described. But then again, as Facebook is showing with the Oculus Rift and specifically their Social VR demo, that their ‘new communication platform’ might be a new addition to a medium which I believe is in a state afflux.

10 Data gathering and privacy

That humans immersed in virtual environments behave just as they would in the physical world could possibly raise certain dilemmas such as privacy. I think that for Facebook, as a date driven company, not to use the Oculus platform to track user behavior would not just be out of character, it would be a bad investment. In 2015, 95% of Facebook’s revenue came from advertising (Statista, Facebook's advertising revenue). Acquiring companies like Oculus can help Facebook to obtain relevant user functions and generate detailed user data (Bechman 80), which can be used to benefit targeted advertising. Facebook has often been blamed for their walled garden mentality (Rogers 5). While Facebook claims to make the world more “open and connected” (Zuckerberg, 2014), walled gardens are closed software systems where the provider has control over the users their access to content and services and are able to direct user navigation within particular areas (5), which can be used as a commodification strategy (Arora 31). Even though Facebook’s mantra states that their mission is not just a corporate one but one pursued in society’s interest and Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook’s chief operations officer) explained in an interview to the Guardian that they have; “really big aspirations around making the world a more open and transparent place; we define our aspirations more in terms of that mission than in terms of the company’s aspirations.” (Van Dijck 45), some reactions of backers on the Kickstarter page indicated that with the acquisition by Facebook, they think that their privacy on the Oculus platform is at risk. Even though Facebook can be joined by anyone over the age of thirteen, to users the platform itself is less open than it appears to be. Anne Helmond explains in The Web as a Platform, that although Facebook allows you to download “parts of your own data, it cannot be imported into and used in another network” (Helmond 37), which locks users into a particular platform (37). She argues however, that although Facebook was originally designed to be a closed system, with the introduction of API’s that deliver restricted access to data, Facebook is opening up from a closed social media network to a relatively open social media platform (38). Still, content that is deemed inappropriate is regularly being removed by Facebook, and the platform raised both traditional dilemmas about free speech and public expression, and even some new ones (Gillespie 359). One of these new dilemmas surfaces nearly two years after the acquisition of Oculus by Facebook. Reddit user Woofington discovered that when a user installs software that is needed to make use of the Oculus Rift platform a program named 'OVRServer_64.exe' is installed that has full system access. This program is always turned on during the use of the Oculus Rift and frequently sends information to the servers of Oculus’ owner Facebook, even after shutting down Oculus home. Jonathan Zittrain explains that tethered appliances (like the Oculus Rift) maintain a continuous connection with their vendors to ensure that “functionality and security 52 improvements can be made as new problems are found” and change them from afar (101). The sending and receiving of information, go to and come from, only one source. This became clear when proprietary software for the Oculus Rift platform, after a hack, became playable on the device of the competitor HTC Vive. Oculus quickly send out an update that erased any user modifications, disabling the ability to play Oculus games on the Vive (Machkovech, Homebrew Patch). Although it is unknown exactly which information the Oculus sends to Facebook, a look in the Oculus Rift Privacy Policy supports this allegation and shows that they automatically collect information about their users when they use their services. Of course this is nothing new, and many companies collect information to improve their services. However, besides the information collected by Oculus regarding information about how users interact with their services, what type of device they are using (such as a headset, PC, or mobile device), their browser or operating system, their Internet Protocol ("IP") address, and location data which they derive from GPS signals and Wi-Fi-networks, they also collect information about the user’s physical movement and dimensions when they use a virtual reality headset. It is noteworthy that in the Oculus Rift Privacy Policy they specifically state virtual reality headset instead of Oculus Rift so that they are able to collect information from other headsets if they make use of their services (Oculus Privacy Policy). Maybe even more intriguing, in the section How do we use information? they explain that they use the information to market to their users: “We use the information we collect to send you promotional messages and content and otherwise market to you on and off our Services. We also use this information to measure how users respond to our marketing efforts.“ (Oculus Privacy Policy). Where it was previously only possible for Facebook to track the online actions and behaviors of their users, with the Oculus Rift they are able to take it a step further. In The Data Revolution Rob Kitchen explains the principle of the data-body. Through the capturing of user generated data, a data-body can be constructed which can be used for targeted advertising. The data-body consists of our online actions and behaviors and according to Rob Kitchin this data-body probably indicates more accurately who we are and how we really behave than we would necessarily chose to reveal (177). At the moment however, Facebook is limited to data generated on their platform and collected through their trackers and tools such as the Like button (Gerlitz and Helmond 11). As you might have experienced yourself, visiting a clothing website may result in getting personalized advertising on the latest and greatest shirts and jeans on Facebook. As they are also tracking body-movement they will be able to expand the data gathered on their social media network with the data obtained from the Oculus Rift. Even though head of the Oculus Studio, Jason Rubin, replied that the Rift is a new medium and that everything will be all right considering their privacy sensitive data (Tweakers.net). Although it is unclear what Rubin meant with ‘everything will be all right’, 53

Facebook might be able to create the most detailed data-body yet with the data they gathered from their users In chapter 6 on ‘Communication through body language’ I discussed the importance of face-to-face and non-verbal communication in relation to the Oculus Rift as a new communication platform. The data gathered from The Oculus Rift does not only indicate body movement but important social cues as well. According to Hall for example, people maintain a personal buffer space around themselves and others. This personal space is influenced by factors such as, culture, race, gender, age and affiliation (116). Interaction in online environments are governed by the same social norms as those in the physical world (Yee, Nick, et al. 119). Users will for example move their avatar or make no eye contact if somebody they do not know or like comes to close. In some instances, groups will gather to convey feelings, opinions or even protest and in some extreme cases people will even use their digital bodies as a way of engaging in sexual practices (Taylor 45). This means that it is possible for Facebook to track these body movements and social interactions in virtual environments and capture data about them, gaining not only information about personal behavior but interpersonal behavior and that of groups as well (Yee, Nick, et al. 119). Although the Oculus Rift has promising characteristics that I think will enable the platform to revolutionize communication, issues such as the openness of the platform and privacy make me question whether the acquisition by Facebook is for better or worse. Facebook shows with their own social virtual reality demonstration Social VR, that they stepped away from game mechanics to motivate the social aspect, and try to create an as real as possible, immersive experience. However, the Oculus Rift platform does not solely rely on the demo created by Facebook and future and third-party developments might have some interesting additions to make to the Oculus Rift as a communication platform.

11 Discussion

When Mark Zuckerberg announced that at Facebook they agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology, he added that virtual reality has the potential to change the way we live, work and communicate (FB Q415). Although the Oculus Rift was initially designed to be the first truly immersive virtual reality headset for video games, Zuckerberg envisioned that the Oculus Rift will one day operate as Facebook’s new communication platform (Zuckerberg). From a computational perspective, a platform must serve as an infrastructure to build applications on (Gillespie 349), which means that for the Oculus Rift, there can be developed for both hardware, software and a combination of the two. Since the inception of the first virtual reality technologies in the 1960s, it has been well over 50 years before the technology was finally ready for consumer availability. While during those time many technologies with a variety of purposes were being researched and developed, remarkably enough, only few research was conducted into virtual reality as a communication medium. This research therefore tried to answer the question: In which ways can the Oculus Rift, through its hard- and software, be positioned by Facebook as its new communication platform? Although it is hard to identify a single virtual reality by examining the apparatus alone, with the Oculus Rift, a medium for conveying multisensory artificial experiences extending the human sensorium is mostly done through its hardware. In theory the Oculus Rift is nothing more than a set of displays with spatialized audio that gets strapped extremely close to the user’s face and keeps the user in a continual suspension of disbelief (Sherman and Craig 7). However, what makes the apparatus inherently different than two-dimensional stationary displays, is the fact that stereopsis generates a more natural three-dimensional perception and the Rift enables users to look around due to its head tracking function (Hansen 1). This allows users to physically move in space which creates a complete surround environment (Laurel 2). Additionally, input devices such as Oculus’ Touch controllers, transfer hand movement into the virtual environment, enabling users to use their hands to for example alter objects or convey meaning through non-verbal cues. This ability, to physically move in space, is what many researchers feel to be the measure of immersion (Krueger, Sherman and Craig). I do however believe, that how the Oculus Rift is originally designed, for sitting or standing, does not limit its use as a communication medium. Conversations are often carried out sitting and the biggest impact of the lack of physical movement will therefore mostly be experienced for its other purpose; gaming. For the Oculus Rift as a communication platform, and virtual reality in general, creating immersion is one of the key elements for experiencing convincing virtual reality, as it is the degree to which one feels part of the environment (Witmer and Siger 227). It is however the 55 increased feeling of presence, which is created by involvement, immersion and the inclusion of other people in multiparticipant virtual reality, that for the Oculus Rift as a communication platform stands out to differentiate it from more other media. Facebook’s Social VR Team is working on “combining a sense of presence with the ability to interact with the environment and communicating through body language as well as voice” (Newsroom, F8). Although communication in multiparticipant virtual reality has advantages, it also has disadvantages. I believe that communicating with a large group of people in virtual reality is less orderly than for instance a group conversation over an instant chat messenger. Additionally, virtual reality meetings are always live, it would feel awkward to film oneself and send it as a message so the users can replay it at any time. With its social media network, Facebook already owns a communication platform, one for sharing and creating social experiences. However, when we look at Facebook’s products and platforms, most, if not all of them are two-dimensional. On Facebook you can only hear and see nonverbal messages such as emoticons or other people their profile pictures, and even Facebook’s video calling service does not enable the same immersion, presence or media richness as the Oculus Rift does (Knapp et al. 7). Instead of peering in through a narrow window, the Oculus Rift as a new communication platform, does a far better job at replicating real life and social encounters such as face-to-face communication through immersing users in virtual environments (Kaplan 62), that which Facebook wants to achieve with their Social VR demo. This can even create a kind of social presence, a psychological state in which humans behave in the virtual world as they would in the physical world (Blascovich 130). But might this also be one of the limitations of the platform? That humans who use the Oculus Rift act just as they would in physical social encounters? Remarkably enough, meeting people in the virtual world, can be so real that it alters the way people identify themselves (Farman 22). This altering of self-identification has to do with the fact that some software applications allow their users to create their own avatars. These self-designed avatars can enable users to be perceived as who- or whatever they want to be, which transforms self-esteem and social self-perception (Bailenson and Blascovich). Although Facebook’s Social VR demo does not support the customization of avatars in the way applications like SecondLife do, future ‘social’ applications for the Oculus Rift might, potentially creating a diversity between physical and virtual life. However, more research is needed here to see how these developments evolve and influence culture and society. For the Oculus Rift to become a communication platform, it has to offer communicative services and enable developers to create applications that make use of the platform. Oculus offers third party developers SDK’s, which are programming packages, that will provide developers with a set of programming instruction and connectivity tools. These connectivity tools such as chats, rooms, leaderboards and matchmaking create social presence on and 56 outside of the Oculus platform. Making use of the SDK and Oculus’ global infrastructure in addition, ensures that all devices are updated simultaneously, a crucial part for a communication platform if they want the devices to be able to interact with each other (Oculus PC SDK). This however, enables Oculus to regularly gather development and user data. Besides gathering data, Oculus limits its users to windows 10, this while during the Kickstarter campaign they promised they would support both Linux, OSX and Windows 10. Although it is understandable that Oculus made the decision to develop for Windows from a hardware perspective –the Oculus Rift needs a hefty computer rig to work properly– for its function as a communication platform it limits users’ choices in operating systems. Subsequently, Oculus is developing proprietary video games that only work on the Rift (Orland, Just how “open”). Although they are not the first company to develop proprietary software, if we look at Facebook’s mission which is “to make the world more open and connected”, I find the strategy they are following a peculiar one. After all, Facebook’s social network is also accessible via a combination of multiple operating- and hardware systems. At the F8 Facebook Developer Conference in April 13 2016, Facebook finally showed what they have in mind for the Oculus Rift as their new communication platform. With their Facebook Social VR demo, they moved away from the key characteristics of virtual reality that pioneers and researchers have been discussing in length and accepted since its inception in the 1960s (Laurel 3), and took on a new approach, proving that virtual reality is a medium in flux and for them those characteristics are not set in stone. Although they enabled geographically separated users to be together in a virtual space and communicate both verbally and non- verbally, the space itself did not allow for much movability which significantly decreases immersion. The rest of the scene was composed out of 360-degree photo or video, making it, in the light of Laurel’s ‘characteristics of virtual reality’, little more than a glorified photobook. While one of the benefits of the Oculus Rift is that through software, it can enable people to act in the ideology of cyberspace, Facebook wants their users to be their real selves in their Social VR demo. They want to eventually let users take a picture of their face with their smartphone, which will be displayed on their avatar. But what is real for Facebook? As Farman explains, the virtual does not have to be perceived as the opposite of the real “instead it is a component of the experiencing of the real” (22). For Facebook ‘real’ means that it replicates real life as close as possible and that it does not feature game mechanics, because according to Social VR product manager Mike Beltzner, the more game like an application is, the less social interaction occurs. But then again, is this true? I have been an avid World of Warcraft player for over 12 years, and many of my social interactions happen within that game. Applications without game mechanics might prove to increase the interaction between you and the people you know in real life, but what about the people you met through games? 57

Fortunately, it is not just Facebook who determines the future for the Oculus Rift as a communication platform through software applications such as their Facebook Social VR. As the Oculus Rift is a platform and almost everyone can develop for it, developers are able to create their own social applications for the Oculus Rift. At Linden Lab, creator of the immensely popular online social world Second Life for example, they explain that their new application will enable users to decide their own avatars’ appearance and create content in social virtual reality without them requiring to be professional developers (Project Sansar). Other application developers such as those of AltSpaceVR promise to bring familiar settings into virtual reality, and enable users to meet in virtual rooms where they can communicate and make use of physical gesture and movement without leaving their homes (AltSpaceVR). It becomes clear that physical gestures form one of the key characteristics of the Oculus Rift as a communication platform, both from a hard- and a software perspective, as it enables users –in addition to verbal communication– to communicate non-verbally as well. Nonverbal communication, and specifically face-to-face communication, is often revered to as the first known method of interaction known to all humans and learned and practiced throughout a lifetime (290). Users can look each other in the eyes and have conversations including important non-verbal cues. Although this enriches communication vastly, it might have disadvantages we are not used to when we are for example communicating via more traditional media such as email or text chats. Communication is inherently a cultural affair, even in text messages, subtle changes between cultures can be recognized. However, when non-verbal cues are added to communication, these cultural differences might create misunderstandings. Greeting through email mostly starts with a ‘hello’ or ‘dear sir/madam’, with the Oculus Rift, greeting can now be simulated by the shaking of a hand, bowing or even kissing of a person. Many virtual reality researchers and users who experienced the Oculus Rift praise the fact that it makes use of natural gestures to act or communicate, learned and practiced throughout a lifetime. But what is natural in this sense? Human life has always been influenced by media, and children are already making use of media technologies such as smartphones or tablets, from a very young age. Are these not learned and practiced throughout a lifetime? Although virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier believes that virtual reality will eventually enable new forms of communication, I am unsure whether these will already come to be in the coming decade. However, new or extended forms of communication have been created throughout the history of man and the Oculus Rift platform might just be the new communication medium which makes it possible. Evidently, the Oculus Rift as a communication platform can only function as a marriage, layered through hard- and software, both for developers and consumers. The apparatus itself can, through correct software design, enable users to immerse themselves and create a feeling of presence much greater than more traditional media. Although the Rift is still 58 somewhat big and clumsy, with a 700 dollar price tag it is in reach for early adopters who want to commit a small fortune to a relatively new technology. Compared to the multi thousand dollar setups from the past, the technology is finally getting ready for consumers globally. Through its tracking function and input devices the Oculus Rift adds a familiar way of communication. However, I believe that new development for the Oculus Rift as a communication platform will primarily come from the ability for third party developers to develop software on the platform, since with the first Oculus Rift consumer edition, the hardware affordances are mostly set in stone.

12 Conclusion

The Oculus Rift as a communication platform is layered through hard- and software and differentiates itself from more traditional media, that for example feature two-dimensional stationary displays, by increasing the immersion of users into a virtual environment by means of stereoscopic displays, spatialized audio and motion tracking, via both the headset and its controllers, creating a complete surround environment. Although a great deal of computer mediated communication is done verbally, through the tracking of head and hand motion in space, the Oculus Rift enables users to have face-to-face and non-verbal communication which many theorist and researchers involved in computer mediated communication, generally acknowledge to be the ideal form of interpersonal communication since it is learned and practiced throughout the lifetimes of humans. These motions can subsequently be displayed in the virtual environment through the use of an avatar which helps ground the user in the virtual reality experience, potentially transforming self-esteem and social self-perception, and establishing a stronger feeling of presence. This feeling of presence increases when users share a virtual environment with each other, creating multiparticipant spaces. However, in addition to presence created directly through the viewing of other users, connectivity tools such as, chats, rooms, leaderboards and matchmaking, that are integrated in the Oculus Rift platform and can be integrated by developers into their games and applications, create a form of presence through software, even if players are offline. Creating a sense of presence is therefore essential for the Oculus Rift as a virtual reality technology and to be perceived as a new communication platform. As the Oculus Rift platform is made up out of hard- and software, smart software design has to be applied to applications to create a convincing virtual reality experience for the use as a communication platform. Key characteristics and understandings that virtual reality pioneers and researchers have been discussing in length and accepted could act as guidelines for software developers to create virtual experiences that enable people to communicate in natural and maybe even new ways. However, virtual reality is still very much a medium in flux, and Facebook shows with their Social VR demo that they are dividing from these characteristics to create the application they have in mind which means that the key characteristics in the future might have to be rewritten. The ideology of cyberspace as a utopian virtual location for its users, freed from physical constraints, is one of those understandings that Facebook, with their Social VR demo, shoved aside. Facebook is aiming for more realism in virtual reality and explicitly moves away from game mechanics to benefit social interaction. It seems however, that for Facebook, social is not only about human connectedness but, just as with their social network, consists of automated connectivity as well. 60

Although software developments for the platform can be developed without making use of the supported SDK’s, making use of the global infrastructure Oculus provides, ensures that all devices are updated simultaneously, a crucial part for a communication platform if the devices should be able to interact with one another and work with the same software. Unfortunately, there is the matter that the Oculus Rift and SDK are not allowed to be used to interface with unapproved commercial virtual reality devices. In addition, Oculus is collecting data from both developers and users which makes the statement of them being open questionable and can cause several privacy issues. The question this research tried to answer, about in which ways the Oculus Rift, through its hard- and software, can be positioned by Facebook as its new communication platform, is a complicated one. Even though the Oculus Rift apparatus and its input-options can be researched extensively, its use in combination with software can create many new purposes. It is true that the hardware to some extent influences creative production. However, in the light of the Oculus Rift as a communication platform, many questions will arise as in how the hard- and software are used together in the future instead of separately. With the release of the Oculus Rift consumer edition being weeks ago, not many social applications for the Oculus Rift platform have yet been released. I strongly suggest for future research to delve deeper into new developments of both the Oculus Rift platform’s hardware, software and the marriage of the two, as I feel it will most definitely have an impact on the way we are going to communicate.

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