Mark Zuckerberg recently took a tour of his Redmond, Washington-based Oculus Research Lab, where Michael Abrash, Oculus Chief Scientist, and his team are attempting to push the limits of VR hardware.
Zuckerberg shared a glimpse of the inner workings of Oculus’s advanced research and development facility on his Facebook page. The social media magnate shared images of the laboratory’s clean room which “filters out particles 1000x smaller than a spec of dust;” an under-construction anechoic chamber, which will be “so quiet that you can hear you own heart beat” when it's finished; and a five-axis CNC milling machine that allows Abrash’s team to pump out rapid prototypes.
A glimpse of the inner walls of the Oculus Research Lab is interesting by itself, but one picture sticks out among the rest. Zuckerberg shared an image of himself trying a tracked glove prototype.
“We're working on new ways to bring your hands in virtual and augmented reality,” wrote Zuckerberg. “Wearing these gloves, you can draw, type on a virtual keyboard, and even shoot webs like Spider-Man. That's what I'm doing here.”
A cursory look at the image shows that Oculus is far from ready to bring tracked gloves to market. Zuckerberg is sitting amidst an array of professional-grade optical sensors from OptiTrack, and the Rift headset he’s wearing has five markers attached to it. It’s nice to see that Oculus is looking into other input methods for the Rift, but we're not holding our breath for a consumer product announcement anytime soon.
