Oculus Cinema To Bring 'Online Multiplayer' Experience To Movie Watching

Oculus has revealed a future update to its Oculus Cinema app will recreate the experience of going to the movies with your friends. As it is now, Oculus Cinema acts as virtual movie theater, letting users watch films on a virtual headset, which simulates the large screen experience. Unfortunately, only one person can see the movie at a time, making for a lonely couple of hours. With this new feature, Oculus Cinema gets a "multiplayer" mode, with multiple people watching the same movie together.

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey spoke to Road to VR and explained how they want to make movie watching a much more social experience. The goal is to "replicate the experience of being in a movie theater or home theater with all of your friends," Luckey said.

While Oculus Cinema's multiplayer will at first require users to be together in the same room, a long-distance option is in the works too, along with ability for users to communicate with each other. One cool feature it has now is that users can look over at each other, seeing them in the same virtual cinema.

Along with multi-user watching from different locations, Luckey said an avatar system is on its way too, but without going into details. Oculus Cinema is already available on Samsung's Gear VR headset, while the feature will be included with the consumer version of the Oculus Rift when it's released in 2016.

SOURCE Road to VR