Oculus boosts virtual reality development with acquisitions

Facebook-owned Oculus VR moved closer to launching its virtual reality gear on Friday with fresh acquisitions of startups and talent.

Oculus announced it bought two-year-old Nimble VR and a second startup called 13th Lab, but did not disclose financial details.

Nimble specializes in hand-tracking technology "which has the potential to be a great (virtual reality) user experience," while 13th Lab is focused on real-time 3D modeling such as simulated visits to pyramids in Egypt or the Roman Colosseum, according to Oculus.

Oculus also announced that it has enlisted the motion-capture skills of Chris Bregler, whose recent projects include visual tracking for the films "Star Trek Into Darkness" and "The Lone Ranger."

"Nimble VR, 13th Lab, and Chris will all be winding down their existing projects to focus on VR full-time at Oculus as part of both product engineering and Oculus Research," the company said in a blog post.

Facebook early this year bought the virtual reality headgear company Oculus in a deal valued at $2 billion.

Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg said that the acquisition of Oculus was a long-term bet that making the social network's offerings more immersion-focused would pay off.

"People will build a model of a place far away and you will just go see it, it is just like teleporting," Zuckerberg said.

The 30-year-old tech titan billed the acquisition as part of a drive to build the "next major computing platform that will come after mobile."

Oculus head gear has yet to become commercially available.

© 2014 AFP