Andrew Scott Reisse, founding member of the Oculus VR team and engineer, tragically passed away Thursday, May 30th.

This tragedy deeply affected friends and fellow team members, who remember him fondly. Andrew Reisse is a figure who will not be forgotten and his work will always remain a mark on the video game community. He has been said to be a brilliant engineer. He was praised and loved by others and left a lasting impact on the company which he co-founded. His progress in gaming will always be an inspiration to others in the community and it is because of him the Rift was able to be created.

The tragedy occurred when Reisse, who was 33, was struck by a car that was speeding while he was crossing a crosswalk. According to various sources, the car in question, driven by alleged gang members, was being pursued by the police after fleeing from a fatal police-involved shooting.

In Memorial

Reisse is praised and fondly remembered as a brilliant photographer and computer graphics designer. It is noted by his friends that he was loyal and a mentor who inspired his entire team. According to Oculus VR, some of his collages and employees of the company knew him from when he was in college studying computer science. During this time, Reisse met the future CEO and chief software architect of Oculus, Brendan Iribe, and Michael Antonov, and together they built the Scaleform Gfx user interface system and worked on cloud gaming platforms before starting Oculus.

The Oculus VR team was also inspired by Reisse’s dedication to open-source projects. He turned down a company that sought to acquire Scaleform, the middleware company he founded, in favor of another, Gaikai, so that he would be allowed to work on open-source side projects. He worked with Gaikai until he began working with Iribe and Antonov to co-found Oculus. In Oculus he led the creation of the Rift developers kit and integrated it with the Unreal engine. Reisse is also responsible for the support of games such as Hawken for the Rift since the beginning of the Rift’s creation. Though responsible for this, his colleagues state he never bragged about his accomplishments. He was a dedicated worker, and when he wasn’t programming, he was leading his team and helping them brainstorm.

Oculus VR has lost a brilliant mind in Andrew Reisse.