Facebook has named Hugo Barra its vice president of virtual reality, with the Brazilian tech wizard and entrepreneur to head up the company’s Oculus programme.

Barra, who previously ran Chinese phone maker Xiaomi’s global division has also served in a number of product management roles at Google in London and California, including as vice president of Android.

During his time at Xiaomi, Barra worked on the company’s own virtual reality headset, also launching a range of new smartphones.

“Hugo is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team,” said Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

“I've known Hugo for a long time, starting when he helped develop the Android operating system, to the last few years he's worked at Xiaomi in Beijing bringing innovative devices to millions of people.

“Hugo shares my belief that virtual and augmented reality will be the next major computing platform. They'll enable us to experience completely new things and be more creative than ever before. Hugo is going to help build that future, and I'm looking forward to having him on our team.”

Zuckerberg revealed last week during testimony in a lawsuit against Oculus – which has been accused of stealing the technology from another developer – that he was planning to spend US$3bn (€2.8bn, £2.43bn) over the next decade in making the Oculus technology better. If found guilty, Facebook would be forced to pay US$2bn (€1.87bn, £1.62bn) on top of that sum to compensate developer Zenimax.