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Facebook Virtual Reality: Rachel Rubin Franklin From ‘The Sims’ To lead Social VR team

uBmuse
First Posted: Oct 12, 2016 06:06 AM EDT

Social Networking Geeks have always wondered how making friends in a virtual reality environment would be like. Recently, Facebook gave an answer to that question when Mark Zuckerberg introduced the Social Networking site's VR tech. Now, the company has decided to go a step further and has hired Electronic Arts' VP Rachel Rubin Franklin to be the new head of its Social VR team.

Those days are not far when an Oculus Rift User will be able to call a real world person using the Facebook Messenger App. Facebook believes Rachel Rubin Franklin to be the perfect person for making the job happen.

Bringing The Virtual Reality To Life:

Mark Zuckerberg, earlier last week gave an exciting presentation on how Users can explore the Virtual Reality together. Facebook's demo showed Oculus Rift Users from different places playing a game of cards in the virtual world. Zuckerberg, also placed a video call to her wife from inside the VR as an animated character in the Demo. Franklin has earlier worked at Electronic Arts since 2011 as an executive producer, GM, and VP. Electronic Arts is responsible for 'The Sims 4', the best-selling PC game of 2014-15. She has also worked previously at Activision and the cloud gaming startup OnLive. TechCrunch reports that Franklin will work with Booth and Lucy Bradshaw to bring the VR experience to a new level. The latter had virtually appeared on the stage during Zuckerberg's demo at the Oculus Connect 3 conference. Franklin and her team will work to deliver intimate social interaction ability over VR to people who are geographically separated. The new advancement will be made accessible to Facebook's 1.71 billion global users. She also has to carefully balance the VR interface so that the user feels like he's having a face-to-face conversation with a friend while being present at two separate geographical locations.

With Franklin's past experience, Facebook's social VR efforts are sure to ramp up. Social VR does hold enormous promise in the future, enabling the user to connect with their friends in a totally new way. If Facebook combines its social networking and Oculus acquisition into a real life experience, it is definitely going to leave all other Rivals much behind.

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