Facebook is moving ahead with its plan to connect the next 5 billion people to the Web—with a fleet of drones.
At today's f8 developer conference in San Francisco, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer unveiled the social network's first solar-powered drone (pictured), which can beam Internet access down to people from the sky.
Powered by solar panels on its wings, the unmanned aircraft is utterly massive, with a wingspan greater than a Boeing 737. But it weighs less than a small car. Facebook has already completed its first test flight with the new aircraft in the U.K.
"The idea is to loiter across area at a high altitude, for months at a time, and beam down Internet access," according to Schroepfer, who promised more information about the aircraft later this year.
"Aircraft like these will help connect the whole world because they can affordably serve the 10 percent of the world's population that live in remote communities without existing internet infrastructure," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.
A year ago, Facebook acquired the five-person team at U.K.-based Ascenta, which worked on early versions of Zephyr, the longest-flying solar-powered unmanned aircraft.
The Future of VR
Meanwhile, Facebook's day-two f8 keynote focused on the future of virtual reality.
Imagine being able to experience anything you want, with anyone in the world, wherever you are. In the future, this will be possible, thanks to virtual reality, says Michael Abrash, chief scientist of Oculus VR. He laid out a vision of what virtual reality can be in the future — and it's pretty cool.
Today, virtual reality is good enough to trick your mind into thinking you're some place your not — but just barely. In the future, VR has the potential to "create the whole range of the human experience," he said.
Your hands will eventually be as capable in VR as they are in the real world. Visuals and audio will get better, and virtual worlds will seem real. You'll be able to see your own body when you look down and port the real world into VR, so you can, for instance, pick up your coffee cup or use your computer and mouse without taking off your headset.
It will be a long time before this happens — but the shift is "well underway," Abrash said.
If history is any indication, Abrash is wrong. For decades, people have been trying to make VR happen and, for the most part, they have failed. Abrash acknowledged that developing VR tech is hard, and requires a long-term commitment, but said Facebook's $2 billion acquisition of Oculus will help propel the technology.
"A lot of powerful forces are coming together now to make VR happen," he said.
But this begs the question — why does Facebook even care about virtual reality? Schroepfer says the answer comes back to Facebook's mission — it has the potential to bring people together in new ways.
For instance, instead of just posting a video on Facebook of your child's first steps, you'd be able to virtually transport your friends into that moment. Loved ones living far away would have a sense that they were truly there, experiencing that milestone in person.
"That's our goal over the next 10 years," he said.