Oculus hires former Valve lead VR engineer, ends dev kit sales

Oculus VR, the company behind the Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles, announced on Tuesday that it hired Atman Binstock as its new Chief Architect. We don't usually report on industry hires, but Binstock was one of the lead engineers at Valve behind the “ VR room ” we heard so much about during the company's Steam Dev Days event.

Before joining Valve, Binstock led projects at RAD, DICE, and Intel. He says that Michael Abrash convinced him to come work on virtual and augmented reality at Valve. “Two years later, we've solved some of the basic problems, proven great VR is not only possible but truly magical, and now I want to bring it to the world,” he said on Oculus VR's website . “I'm incredibly excited and humbled by the opportunity — We're just scratching the surface of what's possible, and I can't wait to discover what's next!”

Binstock will lead the Oculus VR research and development team in Seattle, which is currently hiring engineers. As we've previously reported , at the moment, Valve is supporting Oculus VR's efforts rather than pursuing its own VR hardware.

Confirming what we've heard last month , Oculus VR said that it's ramping down production and distribution of the the Rift development kit as it's approaching 60,000 units sold. It also said that it will have more news “soon,” and we know it will be at both GDC and E3 this year.

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