Oculus Acquires Company From Former Software Developers Kinect

Virtual reality headset maker Oculus has acquired a company of former Kinect developers who worked on sensing hand movements with the Oculus Rift. Oculus has also acquired a company that specializes in sketching 3D models.

Oculus is presumably taking over the Nimble VR company because of the developers and the product Nimble Sense. That is a device with a camera and a depth sensor that can detect hand movements at an angle of 110 degrees. The person must be at least ten centimeters and at most seventy centimeters away from the camera. According to the developers, that distance corresponds to the reach of an arm.

In combination with the VR glasses from Oculus and the accompanying software, a person’s hand movements can be projected on a screen. The development team has worked on the Microsoft Kinect in the past.

The other company that Oculus is acquiring is called 13th Lab, which is working to recreate locations from the physical world into virtual reality. Oculus indicates that it may become possible, for example, to virtually visit the pyramids in Egypt or the Colosseum in Rome.

Facebook subsidiary Oculus has announced the acquisitions on its site. Nimble VR recently launched a successful Kickstarter campaign, but that project was canceled. Earlier this year, Facebook acquired Oculus for an amount of 1.45 billion euros.