When the first commercial version of the Oculus Rift headset takes you into another reality, it will leave your body behind. But eventually, your body will come along, too.
On Thursday, Oculus—the VR company now owned by Facebook—told the world it had acquired Pebbles Interfaces, an Israeli company that "uses custom optics, sensor systems and algorithms to detect and track hand movement." Basically, Oculus and 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.
Integrating your body into the virtual experience is an important goal, particularly with respect to the longterm future of VR at Facebook. The company sees the technology not just as a way of playing games, but as a way of, well, social networking—a way of connecting people to each other. And that means it needs ways for us to simulate ourselves—our bodies—in the virtual realm.
Since it was bought by Facebook, Oculus has acquired four companies to help it reach this basic goal. This spring, when it unveiled the commercial version of the Rift headset, the company also showed off a controller that can potentially put your hands in a virtual world, providing a way of picking up virtual stuff, throwing virtual balls, and shooting virtual guns. In the short term, it's for games. In the long term, it's for much more.
