YouTube VR will enable shared 360 viewing parties with voice chat

Oculus first announced its ‘Rooms’ feature back at Oculus Connect 3, which allowed for social experiences like watching YouTube and playing cards together. Since then, developers have been scrambling to make social VR experiences explode into the mainstream, and things like Rec Room have made this possible on other headsets like the HTCVive. Now that Google is introducing its own standalone Daydream headsets, it wants to get into the social game itself with the introduction of shared YouTube VR experiences.

The new YouTube VR will allow for shared viewing parties of 360 videos, and will even utilize the microphone in your device to let you interact with your peers. While this could get a bit rowdy with too many people, watching a 360 video with your friends should allow for ample discussion of the content being displayed all around you.

The feature will be making its way to users later this year, and will utilize small cutomizable avatars to display who is talking and what they are seeing. The feature will likely boost the popularity of 360 videos quite a bit, which is a great thing for a format that is still having trouble making its way off the ground.

Are you excited for the feature? Looking to use this with your friends?

Let us know.