Zuckerberg Shows Off Glove-Based Tracking From Oculus

Facebook’s own Mark Zuckerberg posted to his personal account a peek inside of Oculus Research, the Redmond, WA lab that’s dedicated to researching new VR and AR tech.

The Oculus Research lab is led by one Michael Abrash. In case the name sounds familiar to some, that’s because he used to be part of Valve Software. He left there in 2014 and joined up with Oculus to lead their VR team.

The featured photo shows Zuck using the gloves to “draw, type on a virtual keyboard, and even shoot webs like Spider-Man.” What’s interesting, if you look closely, you won’t see the Oculus sensor that ships with their consumer headset – the Rift. Nope, they’ve opted for the more expensive Optitrack cameras on this system.

Full hand tracking is actually a very difficult problem to solve and get right in the world of VR. This is largely due to how quick a user can flick their fingers and the type of precision that’s needed to track said movements. But if a company can get this piece right and bring to market a system that’s able to do this, and do it cheaply enough to get people to adopt it, it can push VR and AR tech ahead by leaps and bounds.

Mark captioned this photo “When you manufacture really small pieces, you have to keep every surface clean to avoid defects. This clean room filters out particles 1000x smaller than a speck of dust,” providing some hints about the type of manufacturing work that’s going into their new tech.

Mark continues with the photo below. “We’ve built labs that let us quickly make new kinds of lenses and devices to push the boundaries of virtual and augmented reality. This includs a Diamond Turning Lab that cuts metal with a gemstone quality diamond, and this 5-axis CNC milling machine.”

While this peek into the labs at Oculus Research are nothing more than a tease to all us VR fanboys, it really does provide an insight on just how serious Mark, and Facebook, are in their ambitions to create better VR and AR technology.

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