Aaron Nicholls has also worked on Gears of War, Jade Empire and Halo 3

Apr 1, 2014 08:54 GMT  ·  By

The team working on the Oculus Rift announces that yet another developer long associated with Valve, Aaron Nicholls, has joined the company in order to work on the virtual reality solution in the long term, bringing with him a wealth of expertise.

The developer was hired by Valve in 2010 and has worked in a variety of positions inside the company, including on the virtual reality prototype it was testing.

He also had a career at Microsoft and has developed titles like Gears of War, Halo 3 and Jade Empire.

The official Twitter account for the Oculus Rift confirms that Aaron Nicholls was recruited and that he is part of the research and development team.

Recently, the leader of the virtual reality effort at Valve, Michael Abrash, has also joined the company, as have a number of other staffers.

This lends more credibility to the rumors that Valve is entirely abandoning its virtual reality program at the moment and is allowing all those associated with it to join the Oculus Rift.

The company has previously said that it will support the virtual reality headset via its software releases, including the current version of the Steam digital distribution service and the future SteamOS.

The Oculus Rift has recently revealed a second version of its development kit, which introduces better image quality and performance, and is still on track to launch a consumer version of its headset before the end of the year.

An official release window and price have not yet been revealed.

Last week, the company was acquired by Facebook in a 2 billion dollars (1.55 billion Euro) deal that included both cash and stock.

The social network says that virtual technology can be used in the future to allow users to connect with each other in more interesting ways, although the focus for the coming months will remain on the gaming application of the tech.

Facebook has also said that it will work with Oculus Rift to make sure that it keeps all promises it has made to the fans who have backed its initial Kickstarter-based crowd funding effort.

Sony has also announced that it was getting into the virtual reality space with the new Project Morpheus device associated with the PlayStation 4.

At the same time, rumors suggest that it is also exploring something similar for the Xbox One next-gen console and has recently acquired a company that specializes in augmented reality experiences.