Delving in the virtual world was a long-standing wish for gamers – and Oculus Rift has successfully satisfied that desires when the Virtual Reality (VR) advanced technology hit the market and made them feel like they are inside the game.
Facebook-owned Oculus Rift is not taking things even further in the virtual realm by enabling a new technology that will allow gamers to visually transport a part of their body into the virtual, all with the help of a company it has reportedly purchased for $60 million.
With financial back-up from the mother firm, Oculus has acquired Pebbles Interfaces, and even though it’s not clear yet what this Israel-based startup will bring to the table, Oculus has touted it to be “one of the leading teams in depth sensing technology and computer vision.”
Oculus has teased a short video on their blog, giving us a sneak peek in what Pebbles might do for the company, showing off a new ability of hand-tracking movement in real-time.
It’s really stepping up the game from the traditional motion sensors that have been around for a while now, because the new Pebbles technology enables users to transport their hands and fingers directly into the VR realm.
Interaction with the game’s world is showed to be at a 1:1 movement, with all fingers moving in real-time; pushing the boundaries between what’s real and what’s not, the gamer can also bring objects in the real world in their interaction with the virtual realm.
Acquiring Pebbles Interfaces might be one of the best moves Oculus has made, because its technologies are as advanced as it gets. VR tech will benefit greatly from their hardware engineering and computer vision, as they have been dealing with tracking and human-computer interactions for the past five years.
According to the same Oculus blog post, adding Pebbles to their portfolio is part of an effort to revolutionize communication between real and virtual worlds. Five years of development have resulted in creating technology that uses sensor systems, custom optics, and an algorithm that can detect and monitor hand movement.
Everybody at Pebbles Interfaces seems excited about the recent change in command, as expressed by the company’s CTO Nadav Grossinger, who thinks this new partnership will bring VR to the next level by pushing the limits of digital sensing technology. The world will marvel in the result sometime next year, when Oculus will show of their VR headset.
Image Source: PC World
Joe Hennessey
