Edward C. Baig

USA TODAY

BARCELONA — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a surprise appearance at Samsung’s Mobile World Congress press conference Sunday to talk up progress in virtual reality and to promote VR in the future as “the most social platform.”

Facebook, of course, paid some $2 billion in 2014 to buy Oculus which has been working with Samsung on its Gear VR consumer headsets. In fact, Zuckerberg appeared on stage during the MWC event just after audience members took off the Gear VR headsets they had donned to experience virtual reality during Samsung’s presentation.

Zuckerberg is actually scheduled to deliver a keynote address to MWC attendees Monday, presumably to address Internet.org and Facebook’s struggles to bring affordable Internet to poor places around the world, which has met opposition because of net neutrality concerns.

But Zuckerberg was all about VR during his brief appearance on the Samsung stage.

“Pretty soon we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the power to share and experience whole scenes as if you’re just there, right there in person,” Zuckerberg says. “Imagine being able to sit in front of a campfire and hang out with friends anytime you want. Or being able to watch a movie in a private theater with your friends anytime you want. Imagine holding a group meeting or event anywhere in the world that you want. All these things are going to be possible. And that’s why Facebook is investing so much early on in virtual reality. So we can hope to deliver these types of social experiences.”

Facebook also said Sunday it had formed a team to create social interactions in virtual reality. The team will work with Oculus and others at Facebook. It also said it was bringing its streaming technology for 360 video to Samsung Gear VR in coming weeks.

Facebook working on social interactions in VR

Facebook has been selling Gear VR for $99, though for the time being it will be bundled for free to folks who preorder the company’s latest flagship phones that were unveiled here, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge. According to Zuckerberg millions of people will get their hands on a Gear VR this year.

To deal with the challenges in delivering social VR, Facebook recently created new teams to build the next generation of social apps in VR. Hundreds of new titles are coming to Oculus store this year, Zuckerberg says, including Minecraft.

“We’re excited to be focused on building this next important computing platform that has the potential to be changing our lives and to be doing it with zest.”

Virtual reality is getting a lot of focus at Mobile World Congress. HTC, in partnership with Valve, announced that it will begin taking preorders on the consumer version of HTC Vive on Feb. 29; the price is $799 for now.

Samsung and Korean rival LG announced new 360 cameras and the latter is also bringing own VR headset to work with its new G5 phone.

And Chinese-owned Alcatel will ship its new Idol 4S smartphones in a plastic box that doubles as Google Cardboard compatible VR viewer.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter