Facebook for the first time will offer a special VR livestream of the keynote presentation at the company’s upcoming F8 2019 developer conference. Users with Oculus Go or Gear VR headsets will be able to watch in VR, but it’s unclear if there will be a VR livestream that’s accessible by Rifters.

Facebook will offer a VR livestream for the keynote of its upcoming F8 developer conference which will be held in San Jose, CA on April 30th and May 1st. The company is expected to launch (or announce the launch of) its upcoming VR headsets (Quest and Rift S) during the conference.

The opening keynote (which is said to include Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and others) will take place on April 30th at 10AM PT. The VR livestream will happen in the Oculus Venues app which is available on Oculus Go and Gear VR, but not on Rift; users can ‘Subscribe’ to the event via their Oculus account to mark their interest. A non-VR livestream will be available as well.

SEE ALSO
Leaked Zuckerberg Email Reveals Facebook's XR Strategy, 'Our goal is not only to win, but to accelerate its arrival'

At the company’s AR/VR focused Oculus Connect conference last year, Facebook also offered a VR livestream of the event’s keynote via Venues which showed a wide-angle VR perspective from the front row of the presentation while allowing virtual users to watch together at the same time. At the time there was no way for Rift users to watch that version of the livestream because the Venues app is only available on the company’s mobile headsets.

As for the upcoming F8 keynote, isn’t clear if Facebook will offer some version of the VR livestream that can be seen on the Rift beyond simply calling up the non-VR livestream in a virtual desktop app.

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.

Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."