They include messaging with your Oculus pals, along with photo and video sharing and livestreaming to Facebook. You can create events to set up a time to play games with your buddies or arrange meetups, and form parties that all your Oculus friends can join (parties were invite-only until now). Your Facebook friends will also be able to group up with you in VR when you send them links via Messenger.

Oculus says to use these features — and existing ones such as joining parties, adding friends and visiting people’s Homes — it’ll ask you to sign in with Facebook, which powers the social interactions. Facebook has updated the Oculus Privacy Policy to clarify that.

You won’t have to log in with Facebook to use the VR platform. If you do, you’ll still keep your existing Oculus friends, username and profile. You can decide to display your real name (as per your Facebook profile) on Oculus and whether to automatically add your Facebook friends as Oculus contacts. You’ll have control over what you share from Oculus to Facebook as well, along with who can see those posts.

It’s worth noting that if you do sign into Facebook on the VR platform, the former will tap into your Oculus data to power the social features, as well as recommendations and ad targeting. It might suggest things like VR events you might be interested in and ads for apps on the Oculus Store. The privacy policy changes won’t affect third-party apps and games. An FAQ spells out the types of data Oculus and Facebook will share if you connect the accounts.

The ties between Oculus and Facebook services will deepen over time, with new features such as Facebook Group sharing options and watch parties on Quest on the way. A beta for the Facebook Horizon social VR world is also slated for next year.

Parallux’s chief creative officer Kris Layng said, “We came up with this idea for Cave, which we thought was the solution to a lot of problems that are in this emerging industry right now.”

The first issue: You can’t scale in VR experiences yet, he said. Existing systems aren’t capable enough to handle the massive throughput needed for many people simultaneously. There also isn’t yet a way to individually manage members of a large audience in VR. To counter these issues, CEO Sebastien Herscher spent about five years perfecting a system that uses data compression and management that only sends critical information “in a manner that’s built to scale up.”

Because of this inability to scale, the team believes virtual experiences are alienating and isolating. With MASS, though, the team feels encouraged by the level of interaction they’re seeing between audience members. A Parallux representative recalls that at their exhibit in the festival’s Arcade, a father with his two children was pleasantly surprised. “He asked, ‘You mean I can see my kids inside?'”

The Cave is proof that MASS works. It’s a short animated film that transports you to 10,000 BC. The surrounding walls are covered in shamanistic murals. A young woman struggles with a decision she has to make, and seeks guidance from the spirit world. The viewer has no part to play; you’re simply an onlooker. But there is a surprise encounter (I won’t spoil it for you) that immediately draws everyone’s attention to one spot. In both the real and virtual worlds, you’ll see audience members turn their heads to look — my colleague Devindra was on my right as we watched this together, and seeing his generic avatar swivel its head around was amusing.

In technical demos, Parallux saw the effect its technology had on viewers. “People were holding hands, whispering to each other; doing things that you would expect people to do at the cinema or a theater,” said the company’s COO, Gabe Zetter. “But they were all in a shared virtual environment.”

The demonstration appeared simple, though, frankly, it could use better animation. Even so, as a proof of concept The Cave is compelling. Not only can you interact with a large group of people inside a virtual world, but the creators also have the ability to customize your virtual point of view. In another demo, Herscher placed Devindra and I at different spots in the cave, facing each other instead. With more work, Parallux could have even greater control over individual viewer storylines, even.

The implications here are massive. Imagine going to the theaters not to watch a movie but to be part of a VR experience with 49 other people. With the slow adoption of headsets in consumers’ homes, location-based and group VR is more likely to reach a mass audience, at least for the short term. Instead of having people wait in line to put on a headset for a solo adventure that lasts just a few minutes, we could take part in longer, larger scale events. Parallux has ambitious goals. As Herscher said, “We’re not at all stopping at 50, we’re aiming to go much larger than that.”