Apparently the idea is to support external content makers rather than doing everything in-house.

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, wrote in his bog 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 poached Pixar and the video gaming world to head up Story Studio, which it launched in January 2015 at the Sundance Film Festival.

Vive, a unit of HTC and Sony, is 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.

However, writing started to appear on the wall in December when Brendan Iribe stepped down as CEO in December, saying he was going to head up the PC division of the VR company.