VR company Oculus has acquired Pebbles Interfaces, an Israeli company that “uses custom optics, sensor systems and algorithms to detect and track hand movement.” Oculus and parent company Facebook will use this technology to follow your hands after you strap on a Rift headset, so they can reproduce your hands in the virtual worlds you visit.
Pebbles Interfaces specialises in hand-tracking technology, and has spent the past five years working on a controller-less system that integrates a user’s actual hand movements into a VR experience. Unlike competing gesture-identification technologies, Pebbles’ enables users to see images of their own arms and hands in their virtual-reality display. In some other technologies, users can’t “see” their bodies, or only see generic digitally-generated versions. Pebbles’ technology can show unique features like clothing, scars or items held in one’s hand.
Oculus has been on somewhat of an acquisition spree as of late. At the end of 2014 it acquired two companies, Nimble VR and 13th Lab, the former also being a skeletal hand-tracking specialist. In May 2015 it bought UK company Surreal Vision, whose software can map and recreate the real world in a virtual one.
So it’s clear, with these acquisitions that Oculus intends on making its virtual world as realistic as possible. A post on its blog announcing the deal stated: “Over time, technology breakthroughs in sensors will unlock new human interaction methods in VR and revolutionize the way people communicate in virtual worlds.”
