The Oculus blog stated, “We’re excited to announce that we’ve entered into an agreement to acquire Pebbles Interfaces – one of the leading teams in depth sensing technology and computer vision”. Oculus is a virtual reality company that is developing solutions for the social network, hoping to use Pebble’s interface that can focus on and detect users’ hand movements. Both Facebook and Oculus believe the new acquisition will enable them to develop new technologies for their Rift VR headset. Pebbles Interfaces was founded in 2010 by Israel and Nadav Grossinger.
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Meanwhile, Oculus did not reveal the financial details of the deal; however, a report on Wall Street Journal, points out that the company is expected to shell out $60 million for the deal. To do so, the new company will join Oculus VR’s hardware engineering and computer visions teams, designing new technologies for virtual reality and human-computer interactions. The acquisition is being made through Oculus, according to Globes. In addition, the highly advanced virtual reality software can also match and reproduce clothes and accessories.
The studio, which has previously developed VR experiences like Jurassic World for Samsung’s Gear VR headset, will write, direct and produce content that will be available on Oculus’ platform when it launches in the first quarter of 2016.
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The Pebbles interface allows users to see their own arms and hands unlike other technologies. Even PrimeSense Ltd, the company that helped realize Microsoft Corp’s Kinect gesture-control and 3D-sensing capabilities is based in Israel, which later on acquired by Apple. The company that employs only 50 people is building gesture control technology for last five years.
