Facebook builds Oculus team in the UK

Facebook has recruited a team of virtual reality experts in London, that would mark the first Oculus division in Europe. The employee profiles on LinkedIn suggest that in the past six months, Facebook owned Oculus has expanded its team of engineers and developers in the UK.

Mike LeBeau, former senior software engineer at Google, who joined Oculus in January 2016 is leading the Oculus team in the UK. LeBeau, on a Facebook posting in January noted: "We're going to build some really cool stuff." This indicates UK base would play a major role for the development of virtual reality technology.

A total eight of 12 Oculus workers in the UK listed on LinkedIn have joined the team in last six months. The recent job adverts for Oculus developers suggest Facebook is planning to hire more.

An Oculus spokesperson told the Telegraph : "We'll have more to share on our international plans soon."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been spending heavily on virtual reality. Last year the company bought Surreal Vision, a British virtual reality start-up. London is one of the biggest satellites for Facebook and currently tops the list as the first Oculus base in Europe. As for the US, Oculus has offices in six cities in the country and posts in Hong Kong and Seoul.

Along with Facebook, other market rivals such as Google and Sony are at hard work to bring virtual reality to mainstream. Meanwhile, Apple is also rumoured to be working on virtual reality headsets.

Apparently, a secret team of experts is working on Apple's virtual and augmented reality headsets pitched against Facebook's Oculus Rift and Microsoft's HoloLens. The team comprises hundreds of staff including those from its acquisitions as well as employees from companies that are working on next-gen headset technologies.

Virtual reality is expected to first make its way for the video gamers, but it would also bring major changes in the field of education, entertainment and retail. "VR is going to be most social platform [and] we've created new teams at Facebook to build the next generation of social apps and VR," Zuckerberg had earlier said.