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Oculus, which makes virtual reality headsets Rift and Gear VR,
will allocate $50 million to directly fund creators of
non-gaming VR content, Jason Rubin, the company's vice president
of content, said in a blog post.
Rubin added that Oculus is "still absolutely committed to
growing the VR film and creative content ecosystem."
Facebook paid $3 billion to acquire Oculus and retain its
employees in 2014. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said
he believed the medium that offers a 360-degree panoramic view
using headsets "will become a part of daily life for billions of
people."
Oculus tapped talent from both Oscar-winning animation company
Pixar and the video gaming world to head up Story Studio, which
it launched in January 2015 at the Sundance Film Festival.
Facebook's VR ambitions have been threatened somewhat by a
lawsuit from video game publisher ZeniMax Media Inc accusing
Facebook and Oculus of infringing ZeniMax's copyrighted software
code.
A jury found in ZeniMax's favor in February, awarding it $500
million. Oculus has asked for a new trial.
Vive, a unit of HTC Corp, and Sony Corp are also racing to bring
virtual reality products to a mass audience.
Oculus debuted its first short film called "Lost" at Sundance
two years ago, a story of an animated mechanical creature in a
forest.
Last year, Story Studio won an Emmy for original interactive
program for its short VR film "Henry," and at Sundance this
year, it premiered "Dear Angelica," an illustrated film of a
mother and daughter.
But internally, Oculus has undergone some changes in its
management in the past year.
Brendan Iribe stepped down as CEO in December, saying he was
going to head up the PC division of the VR company. In March,
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, who created the prototype Oculus
headset, parted ways with Facebook.
(Additional reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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