Oculus VR acquires start-ups, expands research team

Virtual reality specialist Oculus VR has acquired two start-up firms and hired a new addition to its research arm.

The company has purchased Swedish start-up 13th Lab, a firm dedicated to research into augmented reality, according to GamaSutra. 13th Lab has been working on an AR iOS SDK.

San Francisco-based Nimble VR has also been brought into the Oculus fold. Nimble was in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development and production of a hand-tracking camera peripheral for the Oculus Rift, but the appeal has since been cancelled.

A blog post by Oculus suggests the two firms will shift their efforts away from their current projects and focus entirely on VR research.

Meanwhile, Oculus Research – a division that was first formed earlier this year – has expanded its team with the hire of Chris Bregler, an NYU computer science professor that previously worked on the visual tracking behind blockbuster films such as Star Trek: Into Darkness and The Lone Ranger.