Oculus Rift hires ex-Valve Team Fortress 2 VR specialist
All they need now is an omnidirectional treadmill expert.
The company behind Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset for 3D games, has hired Valve's former Team Fortress 2 VR specialist.
Tom Forsyth, who was working with Joe Ludwig and Michael Abrash on TF2 in VR while at Valve until recently, joined Oculus' team of 20 in-house engineers, the company announced. He will focus on the Oculus Rift SDK and dip his toe on "top secret" VR R&D projects. Hopefully one of them is like that thing in Lawnmower Man.
"The Rift is a great bit of kit and combines a bunch of different technology together in a very clever package," Forsyth said. "It was amazing working with it on Team Fortress 2 and seeing the extra immersion people felt inside a game they already knew so well. I'm really looking forward to helping other developers work with this tech as we go towards a consumer version."
Last month Eurogamer reported on footage of a chap playing the Valve shooter on an omnidirectional treadmill with the Oculus Rift VR headset. You can step, walk or run in any direction and your actions will be fed back into the game.
Also new to Oculus is robotics scientist Steve LaValle, who has joined the company from the University of Illinois. He's leading research and development on sensor fusion, magnetic drift correction and kinematic modeling, which all sound very important and clever.
While we're on the subject, Oculus Rift will be out soon. All development kits from Kickstarter are marked as processing or shipped in the company's system, it said. The consumer version is yet to be dated.