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The news that Facebook has splurged $2bn (£1.2bn) on buying Oculus Rift, the world's first really viable virtual reality headset, has set off waves of plaintive snark in the world of videogames. Virtual reality headsets were supposed to be about totally immersive space battles or sword fighting simulations, not about peer-through simulacra of distant relatives' new kitchen windows. I mean, it's bad enough when Facebook friends have children and instantly change their profile picture to a baby photo, as though having regressed to mewling and puking infancy themselves. Imagine seeing that appalling phenomenon in the future Faceworld.

Facebook will probably not have reassured many observers with the despair-inducing management jargon of its announcement, wherein we learn excitedly that "Facebook plans to extend Oculus' existing advantage in gaming to new verticals including communications, media and entertainment, education and other areas." Pretty sure one of those other "verticals" is going to be advertising that is literally in your face.

Videogame players the world over who were so excited about the headset's promise of "surround sense" ultraviolence are now declaring as one: "Oculus Rift is dead to me." Markus Persson, creator of world-beating world-builder Minecraft, has announced that he is cancelling the version of that game he had planned to make for the headset. "Facebook creeps me out," he declared, via the medium of Twitter, the other giant social media corporation that funds itself with adverts. With commendable alacrity, meanwhile, the developers at art-game co-operative KOOPmode have already released a downloadable satire on how Facebook might work in 3D, graced with the irresistible tagline: "Scroll Facebook … with your face".

The problem is that Facebook is just not cool. And it seems to have a reverse Midas touch – or, according to the version of the myth related by Aristotle, a standard Midas touch (everything the king touched turned to gold, including his food, so he starved to death, apparently lacking the wit to engage a serving wench to spoonfeed him). When Facebook paid a knee-trembling $19bn last month for the messaging service WhatsApp– worth it, according to one plausible theory, because it lets Facebook peer into your phone contacts – a chorus of WhatsApp users immediately announced they were switching to rival products.

So why is Facebook on this buying spree? The media theorist Nathan Jurgenson reads it as "conspicuous acquisition", after Thorstein Verblen's notion of conspicuous consumption. "A conspicuous acquisition," Jurgenson writes, "doesn't exist to make money but is rather a luxury prop to demonstrate a certain type of corporate status." Facebook wants to be seen to appreciate cool stuff, and thus to acquire a cool reputation. Google has Glass; Facebook now has Oculus. We'll see if that makes people think Facebook is cool. In the meantime the announcement looks like very good news for Sony, who have recently announced its own virtual reality headset for the PlayStation 4 calledProject Morpheus. (Named, I hope, after Laurence Fishburne's character in The Matrix rather than the Greek god of sleep, unless Sony plans to market it as an anti-insomnia therapy.)

The other story here is what the acquisition might mean for Kickstarter, which is where Oculus Rift got its original funding and dedicated fanbase. Kickstarter is supposed to be about hip indie projects that The Man won't fund, so if they are eventually sold to The Man after all, that is going to leave a sour taste and perhaps even exert a chilling effect on future projects. With this deal, Kickstarter might have lost its anti-corporate innocence.

Meanwhile, there seems to be an obvious question of economic justice here. The original Kickstarter backers of Oculus Rift might not have been explicitly granted shares in the company, but the company wouldn't exist without their initial contribution. About 10,000 people gave Oculus $2.5m between them. I for one am struggling to think of a good reason why each of them shouldn't get a proportional share of that $2bn sale.

The promise of being able one day to crouch drooling in a corner with goggles glued to your face while you repeatedly jab your "Like" finger into the eerily yielding faces of 3D virtual babies, doesn't seem like such a good deal by comparison.

COMBINATION OF OCULUS RIFT AND KINECT

NASA engineers like what they see in Microsoft Kinect 2 as they continue to work on space robots. A NASA video released earlier this month shows how it is leveraging a combination of Kinect 2 along with Oculus Rift, the virtual reality head-mounted display, for results that have engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory highly impressed. Looking for optimal ways to maneuver robots in space, team members at JPL talked to Engadget recently about what they discovered in pairing the technologies to control a robotic arm.

above all they found that using both the Oculus Rift and Kinect brought them more immersive control, (They were among the developers to receive the first preview versions of Kinect 2. They worked with the latter's motion sensor technology, and proceeded to add Oculus Rift's immersive virtual reality, with the goal of manipulating the robotic arm.)

Alex Menzies, a Human Interfaces engineer, described his observations in working with the head-mounted display and Kinect motion sensor. According to Engadget, he said they were able for the first time with consumer-grade sensor to control a robotic limb's entire orientation. Menzies also welcomed the fact that all the visual input was properly mapped to where limbs are in the real world. "It feels very natural and immersive." The Kinect 2 brings more precision and accuracy. Human Interfaces Engineer Victor Luo said it was allowing them to track open and closed states, and rotation of the wrist. "With all of these new tracking points and rotational degrees of freedom, we were able to better manipulate the arm."

The NASA video notes explain that "Using the new Xbox One Kinect sensor they could manipulate a JACO robot arm in realtime. Also, position tracking from Kinect and rotational tracking with Oculus provided a first-person view for the operator."

The JACO arm, with its three fingers and six degrees of freedom, is from the Canadian personal robotics solutions company, Kinova, known for its platforms for rehabilitation and research. The JACO research edition robotic arm is promoted by the company as a product in the"new generation of lightweight portable robotic manipulator."

CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW

The techno-chic with a few thousand dollars to spare can sport outfits that can change color on a whim.

London-based designer Amy Rainbow Winters showed just how in a FashionWare area at the Consumer Electronics Show here on Wednesday.

On display was a dress she made of fabric with fiber optics woven in and sensors in the sleeves. Light traveled through the cloth, which glowed blue. With a touch of a sleeve, Winters changed the color.

"If you feel like having a purple, the dress will be purple," Winters said. "If you later feel like having red, you have red. You just look at the sleeve and decide what color you want."

Winters designs fabric and clothes, then collaborates with technologists to made the materials needed. She works with many techno-fabrics, including some that react to sound, sun or water.

Nearby she had on display a dress with motion sensors in the cloth that changed colors if the wearer jumped.

Fabric she creates can be made into just about any garment.

"The fabric can be anything; pants, shirts, dresses, hats...," Winters said. "If someone is going to wear Google Glass they might as well wear fiber-optic pants."

Her creations are custom, and have been used in entertainment productions such as music videos or to catch eyes in ads. She is not in the ready-to-wear market.

"I've had some retailers as me about stocking, but you have to be really careful because they are so expensive to make," Winters said.

"They are showpieces; but if people have a couple of thousand dollars to spare here it is."

Fiber-optic dresses cost about $3,000 to make, but the price can rise depending on the design, according to Winters, whose creations are on display online at rainbowwinters.com.

INNOVATIONS OF 13

The Razer Blade

Razer, the gadget company behind the game-centric Razer Edge tablet, was showing off a new product at this year's E3: a super-thin Windows 8 gaming ultrabook, billed as the world's thinnest gaming laptop. Razer's probably right, too--at 0.66 inches thick and with a 14-inch screen it's a sleek little machine that still has the processing power to handle the most demanding game titles. Stuffing a gaming laptop with the internal engineering required for gaming usually means a thicker machine, but it remains to be seen if people will be willing to pony up a hefty $1,800 for the four-pound experience.

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Scientists have discovered a way to make people regenerate lost parts of the body – dignity and all.

Corporal Isaias Hernandez, a soldier who had more than 70% of his leg blown apart in battle, returned home and was told that his right leg muscle would never heal, and he’d be better off with an amputation. Deciding to keep the leg, Hernandez and clinical researcher Steven Wolf tried a new approach – a teeny bit of pig’s bladder.

Called the extracellular matrix, or ECM, it has the power to reawaken a body’s natural healing abilities. By inserting the ECM into his leg – and by combining this with physical therapy – Hernandez regenerated the greater part of its muscle; today it’s as strong as his healthy leg.

Pig’s bladder is basically the key to Wolverine-like healing abilities.