Facebook bets big on AR at its F8 developer conference

Facebook held its F8 conference yesterday, with founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg opening the F8 developer conference with the announcement that the social media giant is making the camera "the first augmented reality platform". Zuckerberg added: "We see the beginning of a new platform".

How does it work? Well, the camera is the first AR platform that has new AR features that will be baked into Facebook's apps as camera options, with Zuckerberg showing off virtual images popping up off of the breakfast table. Zuckerberg also teased "showcased object recognition, adding steam to a coffee mug, and placing a virtual rain cloud above a planet. Then we saw information about a wine bottle on-screen. Gaming, meanwhile, is another consideration that will be coming later this year", reports UploadVR.

Facebook promises that their new AR platform will be "open", with Zuckerberg adding that the closed beta is available today, but "It's going to take a while for this develop". More exciting things are coming, with Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer also discussed the process of creating the AR tech, with algorithms that let camera identify basic moving objects, and more.

Schroepfer showed off an AR Lego block that was projected onto a screen, on a 2016 smartphone versus a 2017 smartphone, with UploadVR reporting a "dramatic improvement in the past 12 months".