The next-generation Oculus Rift headset may come with some design surprises, courtesy of the company's latest acquisition, Carbon Design.
The design and development firm behind Microsoft's Kinect (pictured), game controller, and racing wheel for Xbox 360, will join the Oculus product engineering group, but continue operations from its Seattle-area studio.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Oculus said it expects the partnership to be sealed by the end of the summer.
"The Carbon team brings their expertise around building great feeling, great looking consumer products like the Xbox 360 controller," Oculus said in a blog announcement, revealing that the company has been working with Carbon for almost a year "on multiple unannounced projects."
With 20 years of design history behind it, Carbon brings a modern twist on everyday objects, like its Domino Clock, VieVu2 camera, and SmartTouch Window Lock, as well as a number of high-tech medical products.
"This is an entirely open product category," Peter Bristol, creative director at Carbon Design, said in reference to virtual reality. "With consumer VR at its inception, the physical architectures are still unknown. We're on the cutting edge of defining how virtual reality looks, feels, and functions."
The virtual reality firm's acquisition, of course, means that Carbon Design is essentially the newest Facebook employee, following the social network's $2 billion purchase of Oculus VR.
The Federal Trade Commission gave the final thumbs up in May for Oculus and Facebook to complete their merger, which Oculus intends to use to effectively build the largest Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game ever made.
"A few seconds with the latest Oculus prototypes and you know that virtual reality is for real this time," Bristol said. "From a design and engineering perspective, building the products that finally deliver consumer virtual reality is one of the most interesting and challenging problem sets ever."
For more, check out PCMag's Hands On With the Oculus Rift DK2.