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"Oculus VR, the company behind the Oculus Rift headset, has appointed Valve&amp;#039;s Michael Abrash as its new chief scientist. Abrash, who spearheaded the Steam platform holder&amp;#039;s research into virtual reality, believes that Facebook&amp;#039;s recent acquisition of Oculus VR will help bring such technology to the mainstream.  &amp;quot;Facebook&amp;#039;s acquisition of Oculus means that VR is going to happen in all its glory,&amp;quot; he wrote in a blog post. &amp;quot;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. &amp;quot;I now fully expect to spend the rest of my career pushing VR as far ahead as I can. It&amp;#039;s great to be working with John [Carmack] again after all these years, this time, we&amp;#039;re working on technology that will change not just computer gaming, but potentially how all of us interact with computers, information, and each other every day. &amp;quot;I think it&amp;#039;s going to be the biggest game-changer I&amp;#039;ve ever seen - and I&amp;#039;ve seen quite a lot over the last 57 years.&amp;quot;  Facebook announced on March 25 that it is buying Oculus VR in a deal worth $2 billion, with plans in place to apply its technology to areas beyond gaming, such as communications, media and entertainment, and education. The deal has already caused a backlash in sections of the gaming community, with Minecraft creator Markus Persson scrapping plans for an Oculus Rift version of the game.  Oculus Rift has yet to see a commercial release, with the latest headsets available to pre-order this summer for developers. While a final release date or price is yet to be confirmed, Oculus VR said the technology would be affordable for the average consumer. Watch a video introducing Oculus Rift below:      "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/news/a560985/oculus-rift-appoints-valves-michael-abrash-as-new-chief-scientist/>