Facebook announced plans to launch “Venues,” an app for watching live concerts, sports, and movie premiers with friends.

Virtual venue for you and your friends

Unveiled at the Oculus Connect conference, Mark Zuckerberg said the new Oculus Go VR headset will feature inside-out tracking, and he hopes to see 1 billion users in VR by next year.

The headset will also feature spatial audio with built-in speakers and a 3.5mm headphone jack, making the system fully compatible with the new Venues app.

With the success of Oculus and virtual experience, the move comes as a natural step to go beyond film and videogames to deliver live experiences for the first time.

The competition heats up

The update may also create close competition for third-party Oculus app developers such as NextVR and FoxVR, with NextVR boasting an existing partnership with Ticketmaster.

With Venues being produced exclusively by Oculus, off-brand and third-party competitors may find it difficult to compete with the new VR industry.

As to who will be recording the content for the app, and what event promoters are on board remains to be seen. However Facebook’s content partners should make the development of immersive experience easier than it would be for the competition.

Do you own an Oculus? Are you ready for virtual live events? Give us your two cents in the comment section below.