Mark Zuckerberg aims to catch daughter’s first steps in virtual reality

During a live chat in Berlin today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told viewers he wanted to capture his daughter Max’s first steps in virtual reality.

I’ve been thinking about when my daughter takes her first steps, how I want to capture it,” Zuckerberg said.

When I took my first steps, my parents wrote it in a book with a pen. When my cousins’ child took her first steps, she took a picture with her camera. And when my older sister’s son took his first steps, she took a video on her smartphone.

But when my daughter does, I hope we have a 360 camera that can capture the whole scene, so if my family isn’t there to experience it, I can send it to them afterwards — or it would be real-time enough where I could stream it to them live. They could put on a headset or get a message and feel like they’re really there and experiencing it.

The progression is an interesting one, from text to analog era photography and recording to digital captures on a smartphone and now to the next generation of imaging, virtual reality.

Facebook is heavily invested in the future of virtual reality after purchasing Oculus VR in 2014 for $2 billion. The future of virtual reality hinges on the accessibility and affordability of both content and hardware and the Oculus — which ships March 28th for $600 — could be the linchpin that brings it all together.

“I think [VR] is going to be really profound,” Zuckerberg said. “Not only being able to capture real things in a much more visceral way, but being able to construct different things that wouldn’t be possible.”

It’s hard to argue. Being able to capture once-in-a-lifetime moments, such as a child’s first steps, in order to playback at any point in the future with all of the detail in which you remember, or details you may have missed the first time around, it is undeniably cool.

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➤ Mark Zuckerberg wants to capture his daughter’s first steps in virtual reality [Tech Insider]