Facebook-owned virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR has reportedly acquired Surreal Vision, a company that specializes in generating real-time, 3D worlds. The acquisition of Surreal Vision hints at Oculus making a move from virtual reality into augmented reality world.
Announcing the deal in a blog post, Oculus said “We’re thrilled to announce that the Surreal Vision team has joined Oculus Research!
“Surreal Vision is one of the top computer vision teams in the world focused on real-time 3D scene reconstruction – generating an accurate representation of the real world in the virtual world. Great scene reconstruction will enable a new level of presence and telepresence, allowing you to move around the real world and interact with real-world objects from within VR.”
Surreal Vision founders Richard Newcombe, Renato Salas-Moreno, and Steven Lovegrove, in a statement, said “At Surreal Vision, we are overhauling state-of-the-art 3D scene reconstruction algorithms to provide a rich, up-to-date model of everything in the environment, including people and their interactions with each other.”
“Given the team, the resources, and this shared vision, there’s no better place for us to help bring about these breakthroughs than Oculus. We’re incredibly excited for the future.”
As part of the deal, Surreal Vision founders will join Oculus’ research division in Redmond, Washington. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Bought by Facebook for $2bn (£1.3bn) in 2014, Oculus is expected to release the first consumer model of Rift VR headset in early 2016.
In related news, Oculus announced it will hold its second Oculus Connect developer conference this September.
