SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) today announced that it will showcase next-generation media service ‘oksusu Social VR’ at MWC 2019, to be held in Barcelona from February 25 to 28, 2019.

SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom will both set up a ‘Social VR Experience Zone’ at their booth to jointly demonstrate ‘oksusu Social VR.’ At the zone, visitors will be able to watch a soccer game together in the same virtual space while chatting with each other and sharing comments about the game. SK Telecom’s Social VR Experience Zone will be located in Fira Gran Via Hall 3 Central Hall. 

The two companies will invite visitors to dive into a deeper level of the virtual reality world of the 5G era by enabling them to experience more fun and intuitive media and communications beyond the limitations of location and language.

‘oksusu Social VR,’ a mobile social VR service that enables users to interact with each other while jointly watching Over-the-Top (OTT) content, successfully combined advanced social features with Korea’s largest OTT platform ‘oksusu* in the virtual reality environment.

*‘oksusu’ is the largest OTT platform in Korea with 10 million subscribers. It offers a total of 170,000 movies, TV dramas and video-on-demand created by 140 channels.

By accessing the service wearing a VR headset, users who are remotely located can gather in the same VR space to watch ‘oksusu’ video content and engage in conversations feeling as if they are right next to each other. Up to eight users can gather in one virtual room to share experience.

In the virtual environment, each user appears as an avatar, which can be deeply personalized by selecting face shape, hair style, eye/nose shape, skin color, clothes and accessories.

With the application of gesture recognition technology, avatars can mimic user’s gestures in real time. For instance, they can pick up and throw popcorns, wave cheer sticks and fly paper planes in the VR space. In addition, T real Avatar framework, which includes Blend Shape technology, has been applied to easily adjust avatar’s face/body shape and realize natural facial expressions.

Furthermore, with the commercial launch of 5G, ‘oksusu Social VR’ will offer high-definition 360-dgree video and multi-view service, which enables users to watch from diverse viewpoints at the same time.

In October 2018 ‘oksusu Social VR’ has won the 2018 Global Telecoms Awards in the category of ‘Content Matters’ for showing how it will dramatically change people’s lifestyle and media consumption in the 5G era. Organized by Informa, a global ICT research institute, Global Telecoms Awards is held annually to recognize innovation in advancing and transforming today's telecom industry.

“Deutsche Telekom firmly believes that 5G is the future, and AR/VR is one of the most tangible use cases for 5G. The Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom strategic partnership has resulted in many successful outcomes, and Social VR is the most recent cooperation topic. I sincerely believe that our strong partnership will result in more successes as we prepare to launch 5G network and services.” said Alex Jinsung Choi, SVP, Strategy & Technology In ovation of Deutsche Telekom

“Immersive media including AR and VR will be the most innovative and crucial services in the era of 5G. SK Telecom is building a virtual world beyond reality to enable customers to enjoy new media and richer communications,” said Jeon Jin-soo, Vice President and Head of Media Labs of SK Telecom.