Facebook AR Camera At F8: Facebook Wants To Become Platform For Augmented Reality

Facebook will release an augmented reality camera feature in beta to its new Camera Effects platform on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg Facebook CEO announced at the F8 annual developer conference.

Facebook has been adding technology very similar to that of Snapchat for months, since Instagram and Facebook added stories features that copied Snapchat, as ground work for the augmented reality they would eventually launch, he said.

Starting Tuesday, developers will be able to make their own face filters or overlays for images to help develop AR more quickly through crowd sourcing the development. Zuckerberg also said Facebook is making the camera the first augmented reality platform.

He demonstrated this by showing a mockup of Facebook's AR camera effects in a video to show that it would be developed for object recognition as well as the ability to add features to create AR images and videos.

Not only would users be able to develop or use AR effects but he also showed the possibility of using AR to create art or turn normal objects into spaces for gaming.

Facebook Spaces also launched in beta Tuesday. It's a virtual world for users to interact in. Users can tweak avatars that Facebook will create based on their current profile and everything they post on Facebook will be imported into that virtual world. Users will be able to invite up to three people to join them in VR or bring them into it using messenger video.

These announcements come on the same day Snapchat released World Lenses, 3D lenses in the app, another form of AR.