Oculus Glove Peripheral Prototype Appears On Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Page
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.
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Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years.
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derekullo Scientist: Sir, you need to wear a full body suit to go in there.Reply
Mark: Nah, t-shirt and hoodie work just as well. -
bit_user Why do they need such a clean room? I get that some dust control is needed for assembly of cameras, but isn't this overkill?Reply -
grimfox Might need the clean room for assembling the optics. Kinda wish they had done that with my laptop. There's a speck of dust between the screen and front glass right where the file explorer button is, bothers the crap outta me. Can you imagine how much it would bother you if there was a bit of dust you couldn't clear between the lenses of your rift?Reply -
bit_user Reply
You must be right, but it just seemed like overkill. I guess you need to overshoot the mark, a bit, if you want to be sure.19278392 said:Might need the clean room for assembling the optics.
Speaking of Mark, I wonder how long it took them to clean up, after his visit.
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grimfox yeah, It looks like he's just looking in through a window and the guys in the background are just in the prep area with their full suits for the camera. The guy on the right seems the most un-at-ease with the situation.Reply