Facebook Finds The Force

For some of us, Facebook has quietly faded into the background like someone’s old MySpace page.

What once felt like a private clubhouse for you and your weird friends slowly became choked with memes from “Star Trek’s” George Takei, cat videos and general misinformation.

So props to the tech giant for its continuing efforts to reinvent itself by tweaking the platform to make it more entertaining. Case in point: Last week fans found themselves racing through the desert planet of Jakku in a scene taken directly from the upcoming sequel “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

Gifted with the ability to look in any direction, even as they sped past the wrecked husks of Star Destroyers, many viewers found the experience incredibly cool. Essentially, these new “Facebook 360 videos” drop viewers into an immersive environment where they can look around a scene as if they were actually there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX57YSsUHq0

This clip of specially curated content has been pored over by fans just like every other rumor, clip and photograph from the new film. The location on Jakku, was reportedly the site of an intense battle between the remnants of the Imperial forces and the rising tide of the Rebellion’s new republic.

Fans believe the Facebook 360 clip is shot from the point of view of Daisy Riddle’s character Rey, a resilient human survivor who has spent her life dealing with cutthroats on the desert planet, racing from locale to locale on her trusty speeder. The clip also features new creatures as well as a quick cut of everybody’s favorite new droid, BB-8.

[lz_ndn video= 29654410]

To create Facebook 360 videos, a special set of camera is used to record all 360 degrees of a scene simultaneously, allowing viewers to choose what angle they want to view on the fly. Mobile users can simply drag their finger around the video to view new angles, while browser users can glance around the planet of Jakku at the touch of a mouse.

Starting this month, these 360-degree videos will begin appearing in users’ Facebook feeds, but it’s not just trips through the galaxy that are available to view. Guerrilla media makers RYOT offered up the first 360-degree video shot from inside an active war zone in Aleppo, Syria, as well as a virtual reality video showing what it’s like to swim with dolphins. Infiniti Red Bull Racing put viewers inside the cockpit of a Formula One race car on a lap in Norway. Action enthusiasts at Go Pro slapped its camera on freeride legend Ronnie Renner as he tore up sand dunes in Idaho on his dirt bike.

Infiniti Red Bull Racing put viewers inside the cockpit of a Formula One race car on a lap in Norway.

In fact, there are a number of new publishers sharing new 360 videos including the Discovery Channel, LeBron James and NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” While this month’s Facebook rollout of the 360 project heavily features the company’s media partners, any creator with the cameras and equipment to make these virtual reality like clips will soon be able to share them on the social media platform, a move that may breathe new life into the ailing HD video market.

Facebook’s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg first revealed the technology earlier this year at the Facebook F8 Developers Conference, but it wasn’t until the company dropped the “Force Awakens” clip that fans really took notice. The original post has already garnered over 4.5 million views, and Zuckerberg has been proclaiming that virtual reality is the future of how fans will consume media.

Here, it’s probably important to remember that Facebook acquired the white-hot virtual reality company Oculus last year for $2 billion. In fact, the new 360 videos were developed along with input from and collaboration with the Oculus and News Feed teams at Facebook. However, the Oculus Rift faces some market challenges as well. The price is expected to be over $300 at launch and the system also faces stiff competition from other behemoths like Sony’s new PlayStation VR as well as companies like Magic Leap, which has attracted more than $2 billion in funding and endorsements from the likes of sci-fi novelist Neal Stephenson.

It remains to be seen whether Facebook’s 360 videos will become the new thrilling distraction from the day-to-day grind, or whether it becomes fodder for advertisers to shill new products. Who knows, you might soon see your weird cousin’s cat in all her 360-degree video glory.