Oculus VR purchased two-year-old startup Nimble VR on Thursday in a deal that could give users of the Oculus Rift more control while they are in virtual worlds.
While the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset currently provides only a controller as a tool for users to move around and perform actions, that is likely to change thanks to the Nimble Sense, a depth-sensing infrared camera designed for skeletal hand tracking, according to CNET.
The camera is intended to be mounted on top of the Oculus Rift and angled down at the user's hands to provide gesture control and let users manually interact with 3-D objects.
Nimble VR started out with gloves and moved on to Kinect cameras before creating its own mounted 3D camera, which provides a 110-degree field of view and creates a 3-D point cloud that tracks the user's movements, Gizmodo reported.
The Nimble team started a Kickstarter campaign for its camera in October, but it ended up cancelling it after the deal with Oculus was announced.
The campaign managed to surpass its $62,500 goal with $135,511 before being cancelled, CNET reported.
Oculus VR said the Nimble team will now work on VR for product engineering and Oculus Research, and the startup is expected to add motion-tracking to the headset.
"Today, we're happy to share that we'll be joining forces with Oculus, a team that is creating an entirely new medium, platform and industry," Nimble wrote in a Kickstarter update announcing the deal. "We're excited not only to continue to push at the boundaries of input and user experience in VR, but to do so with the resources and means to make a bigger impact on a larger audience."
A developers kit for the Oculus Rift is currently available, but regular consumers still have to wait to get their hands on the headset.
