Just how popular is virtual reality? It's hard to tell, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said "1 million people use VR every month" at the Oculus Connect 3 developer conference.

Zuckerberg didn't specify what VR specifically referred to. Does that include Google Cardboard? Samsung Gear VR and all of the mobile VR headset clones? He did name-check the competition, and didn't specify Oculus/Facebook in the stat, so it stands to reason he's including all VR experiences in that million.

Still, we wonder just how many of those 1 million monthly people are using the Oculus Rift. And what about the HTC Vive? And just how many people were using Oculus Rift developer kits before the consumer version of the headset launched this past spring?

Again, it's hard to tell how successful that is when VR, as a category, is so broad and spread across multiple different devices and platforms.

A million VR users does sound promising. Even though the Rift and Vive are available, it's still very, very early days for the "next computing platform."

Google's Daydream VR platform is set to launch in the next few months and PlayStation VR launches next week.

Just how popular is virtual reality? It's hard to tell, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said "1 million people use VR every month" at the Oculus Connect 3 developer conference.

Zuckerberg didn't specify what VR specifically referred to. Does that include Google Cardboard? Samsung Gear VR and all of the mobile VR headset clones? He did name-check the competition, and didn't specify Oculus/Facebook in the stat, so it stands to reason he's including all VR experiences in that million.

Still, we wonder just how many of those 1 million monthly people are using the Oculus Rift. And what about the HTC Vive? And just how many people were using Oculus Rift developer kits before the consumer version of the headset launched this past spring?

Again, it's hard to tell how successful that is when VR, as a category, is so broad and spread across multiple different devices and platforms.

A million VR users does sound promising. Even though the Rift and Vive are available, it's still very, very early days for the "next computing platform."

Google's Daydream VR platform is set to launch in the next few months and PlayStation VR launches next week.

Just how popular is virtual reality? It's hard to tell, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said "1 million people use VR every month" at the Oculus Connect 3 developer conference.

Zuckerberg didn't specify what VR specifically referred to. Does that include Google Cardboard? Samsung Gear VR and all of the mobile VR headset clones? He did name-check the competition, and didn't specify Oculus/Facebook in the stat, so it stands to reason he's including all VR experiences in that million.

Still, we wonder just how many of those 1 million monthly people are using the Oculus Rift. And what about the HTC Vive? And just how many people were using Oculus Rift developer kits before the consumer version of the headset launched this past spring?

Again, it's hard to tell how successful that is when VR, as a category, is so broad and spread across multiple different devices and platforms.

A million VR users does sound promising. Even though the Rift and Vive are available, it's still very, very early days for the "next computing platform."

Google's Daydream VR platform is set to launch in the next few months and PlayStation VR launches next week.

With Google showing off a boatload of new hardware and Facebook showing off its new virtual reality prototype, you may have missed some of this week's best new apps. 

Each weekend, we round up a few of our favorite new and updated apps. This week's list includes an app to help you take better 360-degree photos, an app to help you avoid getting regrettable tattoos and a music app for better playlists.

Check out the gallery below to see our top picks. If you're looking for more items to fill up your phone, take a look at our last roundup of can't-miss apps.

One socially conscious company is making your emoji keyboard a little less perfect in an effort to tackle food waste.

Hungry Harvest, a startup service that delivers "recovered produce" to consumers' doorsteps, has created a series of "ugly" fruit and vegetable emoji meant to get people thinking — and typing — about our preoccupation with aesthetically pleasing food.

In late September, the company rolled out Ugly Produce!, an iOS app that gives every user a package of new emoji, including a slightly misshapen strawberry and an imperfect potato.

Pretty produce is the standard in most U.S. supermarkets, meaning fruits and veggies that have visible variations from our standard idea of a robust apple or a snappy carrot are usually tossed. That means roughly 1 out of every 5 edible fruits and vegetables are thrown out every year — simply for appearing a little out of sorts.

Roughly 1 out of every 5 edible fruits and veggies are tossed every year.

This adds up to a lot of wasted food — but it's not only an American problem. About one-third of all food produced worldwide is wasted or lost between the process of food production and consumption, worth around $1 trillion annually.

All this waste is disheartening when you consider the realities of hunger and food insecurity across the globe. But high rates of discarded food also have adverse impacts on the environment. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, organic waste is the second highest component of landfills in the U.S., contributing substantially to methane gas emissions that warm the atmosphere.

Hungry Harvest wants you to use its emoji to make an impact. But it isn't stopping with just an opt-in app. The company is taking its mission further, currently petitioning to encourage Unicode, Apple and Google to adopt the imperfect produce into their standard emoji keyboards.

While it isn't likely that these massive tech companies will change their faultless emoji fruit for something a little more flawed, iPhone users who want to make a difference can tackle the issue through tech. 

At the very least, it will make you think twice next time you scoff at a misshapen melon.

Just how popular is virtual reality? It's hard to tell, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said "1 million people use VR every month" at the Oculus Connect 3 developer conference.

Zuckerberg didn't specify what VR specifically referred to. Does that include Google Cardboard? Samsung Gear VR and all of the mobile VR headset clones? He did name-check the competition, and didn't specify Oculus/Facebook in the stat, so it stands to reason he's including all VR experiences in that million.

Still, we wonder just how many of those 1 million monthly people are using the Oculus Rift. And what about the HTC Vive? And just how many people were using Oculus Rift developer kits before the consumer version of the headset launched this past spring?

Again, it's hard to tell how successful that is when VR, as a category, is so broad and spread across multiple different devices and platforms.

A million VR users does sound promising. Even though the Rift and Vive are available, it's still very, very early days for the "next computing platform."

Google's Daydream VR platform is set to launch in the next few months and PlayStation VR launches next week.

SAN JOSE, California — For as far VR has come and as good as the experiences have gotten, there still aren't many options for those who don't have a high end PC.

But during the keynote at Oculus Connect Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg briefly teased an all-new headset: a standalone viewer that doesn't rely on a mobile phone or a PC.  Right now the device, known at the Santa Cruz Prototype, is just that: a prototype. But it offers a tantalizing look at an untethered VR future.

Though the video demo of the Santa Cruz Prototype was more remarkable for how its brevity more than what it actually showed, Oculus was offering short demos of the device at Oculus Connect and Mashable got a chance to take the headset for a spin.

The demo took place in a windowless room that was set up to look like a living room, with a couch, a desk and other furniture set up around the perimeter. The middle of the room was empty — we were encourage to move around as much as we liked during the demo.

Photos and video weren't allowed inside the demo room but the headset looked just like what appeared in the very short video shown during the keynote. The headset itself resembled the Rift, but had four cameras attached to the front of the headset and the words "Santa Cruz Prototype" emblazoned on the front cover. On the back of the headset was a fan for cooling and a processor.

The three-minute demo consisted of two different animated scenes. One was a suburban neighborhood and the other a rooftop whee you could look down on the buildings around you. The overall image quality lay somewhere between the Gear VR and the Rift. The graphics were cartoon-like and pretty cheesy but the experience was meant to demonstrate the untethered concept of the prototype more than anything else.

There was nothing to actually do once in the scene other than walk around and explore the surroundings, which was sort of the whole point. You could comfortably explore the virtual world around you without worrying about bumping into something. 

That's because as soon as you got within a foot or so of a wall or piece of furniture a series of blue lines appeared in VR to let you know you were too close (you can see them faintly in the GIF above.) Take a step back and the lines disappeared. Move forward and there they were again.

It's difficult to overstate just how freeing this is. If you know anything about VR you know that there are really only two kinds of experiences right now: mobile VR, like the Gear VR and Google's Daydream VR, which use smartphones and wired experiences that rely on a PC connection like Oculus or the HTC Vive. Neither of these give you the freedom to comfortably move around while you're in VR.

The Santa Cruz Prototype does. During my demo, I moved side to side, spun around and walked to all sides of the space — I was never the least bit worried about bumping into anything. The blue lines always appeared as I approached the wall.

This is due to the combination of cameras on the headset, which are able to track your movements in relation to the objects in the room, Max Cohen, Oculus' head of mobile, explained. "What it's basically doing is that it's sampling the environment and so it's looking around at objects that it can then recognize," Cohen told Mashable. 

"You don't have to set up anything. You just put it on your head and in the environment it should, theoretically, work."

There are some caveats. Cohen cautioned that it won't work everywhere. Wide open outdoor spaces, for example, wouldn't work as there are no boundaries for the camera to detect. Some surfaces and lighting conditions may also limit it (my demo was in a brightly lit room with no windows).

So while it does offer the promise of an untethered mobile experience, don't expect to use it outdoors very much.

"We expect this standalone product to still be used in the home but also in the home of your friends because you take it with you. Or maybe you take it to your workplace," Cohen said. "We think it's very flexible but it's not like this one thing that magically works every single place you are."

It may not be magic, but it does feel like the future.