Michael Abrash naar Oculus

Michael Abrash, de VR-specialist van Valve, wordt Chief Scientist bij Oculus. Abrash was de afgelopen jaren voor Valve aan het werken aan virtual reality en wellicht herken je zijn naam ook van de presentatie die hij een tijdje geleden gaf op de Steam Dev Days 2014.

Abrash stapt nu dus over naar Oculus en persoonlijk is hij erg blij dat Facebook het bedrijf heeft overgenomen: "Facebook's acquisition of Oculus means that VR is going to happen in all its glory. The resources and long-term commitment that Facebook brings gives Oculus the runway it needs to solve the hard problems of VR – and some of them are hard indeed."

Volgens de nieuwe Chief Scientist was een kapitaalkrachtig bedrijf nodig om virtual reality écht groots te maken: "The final piece of the puzzle fell into place on Tuesday. A lot of what it will take to make VR great is well understood at this point, so it's engineering, not research; hard engineering, to be sure, but clearly within reach. For example, there are half a dozen things that could be done to display panels that would make them better for VR, none of them pie in the sky.

However, it's expensive engineering. And, of course, there's also a huge amount of research to do once we reach the limits of current technology, and that's not only expensive, it also requires time and patience – fully tapping the potential of VR will take decades. That's why I've written before that VR wouldn't become truly great until some company stepped up and invested the considerable capital to build the right hardware – and that it wouldn't be clear that it made sense to spend that capital until VR was truly great. I was afraid that that Catch-22 would cause VR to fail to achieve liftoff."