Mark Zuckerberg: Virtual Reality is the Future of Travel

Annie Daly
·Contributing Editor
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This could be what your next vacation looks like. (Photo: Rex USA)

Leave it to Mark Zuckerberg to bring the tech travel game to new levels. On Wednesday, he announced in a question-and-answer session on his Facebook page that technology will one day let people travel to places all around the world—virtually.

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“It will be pretty wild,” Zuckerberg said in his characteristically laid-back way, as reported by ARY News. “Just like we capture photos and videos today and then share them on the Internet to let others experience them too, we’ll be able to capture whole 3D scenes and create new environments, and then share those with people as well.”

So how, exactly, will virtual travel work?  It will use headset technology from Oculus, a technology firm that Facebook bought last year for $2 billion. The firm’s headsets, pictured below, will allow users to teleport to anywhere in the world.

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Meet the world’s first Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headsets, which were introduced in March at a conference in London, England. (Photo: Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images for Westfield)

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And there’s more. Not only will people be teleported to their location of choice, the new technology will also incorporate body movements, nearby objects, and the user’s overall environment—meaning he or she will be able to move around and really feel things once they’re there.

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Fighting for the window seat may be a thing of the past if you can simply teleport to your vacation of choice. (Photo: Shutterstock)

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Virtual reality is scheduled to begin in “not too long,” according to Oculus’ chief scientist Michael Brash, who spoke at Facebook’s annual developer conference in San Franciso last month. “Virtual reality is potentially world-changing and incredibly cool and it is really happening,” Brash continued. Get ready.

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