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In case you didn’t see the announcement, we have great news to share: we’ve raised $16 million in a Series A funding round co-led by Spark Capital and Matrix Partners, along with Founders Fund and Formation 8. This level of financial support opens incredible new doors for Oculus, and I’d like to provide a bit of context and backstory. I have been working on virtual reality technology for years. Starting in a garage, prototyping new hardware, and collaborating with other virtual reality enthusiasts...

We have some completely unexpected, tragic news to share. On Thursday, we lost a very dear friend and founding member of our close-knit Oculus family, Andrew Reisse. Andrew was a brilliant computer graphics engineer, an avid photographer(1) and hiker who loved nature, and a loyal friend. Andrew was unique in so many interesting ways. He was extraordinarily kind and utterly selfless. He was a mentor and an inspiration to everyone around him. Some of us have known Andrew since college, and have worked...

Behind the Scenes at GDC 2013 Back in March as we geared up for GDC, we had an idea: “What if we could share our experience at GDC with the community that made it possible (especially everyone that couldn’t make it to the show)?” We decided to pack up a few video cameras and run with it. A lot of moving parts came together simultaneously at the show (even if it was a little crazy): – Thousands of Rift developer demos- 100+ meetings with game developers from all over the world- Hawken...

To build a next-generation platform for virtual reality gaming, we need the best and brightest people in a variety of fields. Over the last few months, the team has grown rapidly (over 20 engineers in house now!), and a lot of incredible talent has joined the Oculus family. Today, we’d like to introduce you to two of our newest heavy-hitters: Tom Forsyth and Steve LaValle! Tom Forsyth, Software Architect If you follow Tom Forsyth on Twitter (@tom_forsyth), you already know of his world-class software...

Oculus SDK Update – v0.2.1 We’ve released a new version of the Oculus SDK, v0.2.1 on the Oculus Developer Center. Highlights for this release include: - Basic drift-correction using the magnetometer. - Platform support for OS X. - Chromatic aberration shader sample. The drift correction is still very much in beta as we continue to tweak and improve it. Also, the Unity and Unreal integrations do not include these new features yet, but they will in the next release. We’ve updated...

For those of you that couldn’t make it to Palmer’s talk and Q&A session at GDC, “Virtual Reality – The Holy Grail of Gaming,” we’ve posted the recording for your viewing pleasure! Team Fortress 2 in the Rift The exclusive Team Fortress 2 Rift development kit hat (TF2VRH) is now available to Kickstarter backers via the Oculus Order Manager. You can claim your hat right now by logging into www.oculusvr.com/sales and following the instructions there. If you pre-ordered a development...

Now that Rift development kits are in the wild and the Oculus SDK is live, game developers have started creating amazing VR experiences. We’re really enjoying checking out the community’s latest samples and demos. Keep them coming! If you have an awesome, new VR experience to share, let us know via Twitter, Facebook, or the Oculus Forums. We’d love to try it! With all the energy in the community, this weekend felt like the right time to put together an update on all things Oculus. GDC...

Rejoice fellow VR pioneers: the day has finally arrived. Oculus Rift development kits are officially shipping! In fact, the very first kits have already started arriving. We actually started shipping on Wednesday, but we haven’t shared tracking information yet because the team is still tied up at GDC in San Francisco. Sorry about that! This means the earliest backers may actually find Rift’s on their doorsteps beforethey receive tracking numbers. A little surprise to keep things interesting. This...