Oculus Picks Up New Chief Architect, Valve's Atman Binstock

One of the lead engineers on Valve’s experiments with virtual reality, Atman Binstock, has left to join Oculus VR as its chief architect.

Binstock will lead a new research and development team based in the Seattle area.

He had been recruited to Valve by Michael Abrash, the VR guru credited with helping Oculus take a big technological step forward last year at a crucial time, before it raised a $75 million round from Andreessen Horowitz. Binstock created an acclaimed “VR Room” for a virtual reality developer gathering at Valve earlier this year.

In a blog post announcing Binstock’s hiring, Oculus also noted that it’s “ramping down production” of the original developer prototypes of its Oculus Rift headsets, due to a hardware component shortage. However, it’s not immediately clear whether that means it will then start ramping up new developer kits based on its more recent prototypes, or if a more consumer-minded announcement is ahead.

The company plans to share more details at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next week.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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