Facebook to close Oculus VR animation studio

Henry | Oculus Story Studio

The award-winning Oculus Story Studio is going to be shuttered by Facebook so it can focus more on supporting third-party creators. The two-year-old unit was behind the short film Henry, which won an Emmy in 2016 for Outstanding Original Interactive Program. But recognition doesn’t seem to be what Facebook wants to focus on. According to Oculus Vice President of Content Jason Rubin, “We’ve been looking at the best way to allocate our resources to create an impact on the ecosystem. After careful consideration, we’ve decided to shift our focus away from internal content creation to support more external production. As part of that shift, we’ll be winding down Story Studio.

Rubin, in a blog post, emphasizes that Oculus isn’t giving up on producing VR film and other creative content for the platform. He says they’ve even invested US$250 million last year on third-party content creators. “We’re going to carve out $50 [million] from that financial commitment to exclusively fund non-gaming, experiential VR content. This money will go directly to artists to help jumpstart the most innovative and groundbreaking VR ideas.

Source: CNET

Xiaomi's Hugo Barra will now spearhead Oculus VR

Former Googler and Xiaomi executive Hugo Barra exited the Chinese company recently stating that life in China, 'had taken a huge toll on my life.' Citing that he misses Silicon Valley, Barra said he'd take an advisory role at Xiaomi. Now we find out, via Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, that Barra will head Facebook's VR initiatives and is being tasked to take Oculus VR into the mainstream. Zuckerberg made the announcement showing his and Barra's avatars hanging out together in VR space.

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‘Superhot VR’ introduces new challenges in upcoming update

Have you played Superhot VR and thought you could finish the game in 10 minutes? Well, the Oculus Touch-based version of this shooter will be giving you the chance to try that out soon. A Forever update of the game is coming and will be bringing that mode to you. Aside from that, the update will let you beat your best scores in the usual bullet time mode, real time, and when you’re facing opponents with faster reflexes. There are going to be new challenges, too, like having to land headshots to kill enemies or having to complete the game using only melee combat. If this is something you’re excited for, the update will be coming next month.

Source: Engadget

Oculus buys eye-tracking company Eye Tribe

It isn’t surprising that Oculus has taken an interest in an eye-tracking technology. This Facebook-backed virtual reality company just purchased Eye Tribe. The Danish startup specializes in creating software developer kits that bring gaze-based controls to mobile devices and PCs. Oculus won’t talk about anything else outside of the acquisition, though. So, we have no word how much the deal cost, what will happen to Eye Tribe’s employees and the company itself after the purchase, or what Oculus plans to do with Eye Tribe’s technology.

However, it is easy to assume what we can expect to show up in the future. Eye Tribe has been working on a foveated rendering for VR, which is meant to boost VR performance by only rendering the part of the simulation the user is directly looking at. With this kind of technology, it’ll help improve immersion, help stop simulator sickness, and reduce performance bottlenecks.

Source: Engadget