Valve’s VR veteran working on “The Next Big Platform” for Oculus and Facebook.
Michael Abrash has departed Valve Software, and is now Oculus VR’s Chief Scientist.
Abrash, seen here giving a VR talk at Steam Dev Days 2014, joins an ever-growing roster of superstar talent at Oculus, including former id Software co-founder and Technical Director John Carmack, Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, and fellow ex-Valver Atman Binstock.
Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR seems to be the catalyst for Abrash, who stresses in his introductory blog post that a lack of engineering resources are the only thing holding VR back at the moment.
“Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus means that VR is going to happen in all its glory,” says Abrash. “The resources and long-term commitment that Facebook brings gives Oculus the runway it needs to solve the hard problems of VR – and some of them are hard indeed. I now fully expect to spend the rest of my career pushing VR as far ahead as I can.”
More details are sure to arise, but I suspect Abrash will be working out of the newly-formed Oculus R&D lab in Seattle.
The news comes on the same day that Oculus Development Kit 2 (DK2) sales are doing “just fine,” in the wake of the Facebook deal.
