Recently updated on April 3rd, 2021 at 09:52 pm
I have just read a very interesting article in Telegraph about the interview with Palmer Luckey, the Oculus VR founder. He is just a 22-year-old dude but he now stands among the giants and icons of the Silicon Valley like John Carmack and Mark Zuckerberg. From the interview, he said that he brought virtual reality back from the dead. Truly indeed. Perhaps, that’s why John Carmack, the game legend, joins them.
 |
| Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR. (Image from Telegraph. Photo Credit: Carlos Chavarría) |
During the interview, there is only Luckey and the reporter. Luckey was not accompanied by any other people from his company. A very brave and confidence guy because he is his own spokesman. I like the way when he said “Ever since I was 15 I’ve tried to act and talk as if I was a public figure. Because I was sure that I would be one day and wanted to be prepared.” Very impressive.
More About Palmer Luckey…
Palmer Luckey is known as the founder and pioneer of Oculus VR company and also the inventor of Oculus Rift, the new generation of virtual reality head-mounted display (HMD) for consumer and mainstream audience. From the “About Us” section in the Oculus VR official website, the way they describe him is like this, “Oculus VR was founded by Palmer Luckey, self-described virtual reality enthusiast and hardware geek“.
 |
| Palmer Luckey, the inventor of Oculus Rift, during Silicon Valley Virtual Reality (SVVR) Conference & Expo 2014. |
He was born on 19th September 1992 and raised in Long Beach, California. During his childhood, he made his pocket money by repairing and selling iPhones. Besides, he also building PCs and crafting mutated video-game consoles from Nintendo GameCube parts. He is really a geek! But the real turning point was right after he watched “The Matrix” film, a must-watch-film for the die hard fan of virtual reality. He wanted to make The Matrix concept as a reality. Maybe he dream to be like Neo 🙂
He started working on the Oculus Rift from a trailer parked in his parent’s driveway since five years ago. At 15, with the income from his iPhone repairs job, he bought the cut-price 3D monitors and head-mounted displays from the government auctions. From there, he started his own project to build a better VR HMD that can overcome many limitations and challenges in the current VR headset. He posted his invention in the popular 3D and virtual reality forum or message board which is “Meant To Be Seen” (MTBS).
In 2012, Luckey demonstrated his Rift prototype during the E3 event. Few days later, Luckey dropped out from the university with his buddy, Brendan Iribe, and they founded Oculus VR company. Then, they plan to raise $250,000 via the Kickstarter, online crowdfunding site. It is for the purpose to build the enhanced prototype and to produce hundreds of this unit that can be sell at $300. The result is spectacular. They got more than 9,500 people joining them and they generated around $2.4 million. Later, Andreessen Horowitz led a round of angel funding which generated another $75 million.
In March 2014, Mark Zuckerberg visited their office in Irvine, California. Zuckerberg really impressed with the Rift and said that it is the coolest thing he has ever seen. No wonder Zuckerberg wanted to acquire Luckey’s company. Although Luckey hesitated at first, but finally he agreed to sell Oculus VR to Facebook for $2.3 billion. That is really an amazing figure for a potentially high-risk VR company. I think Luckey agreed because he and Zuckerberg sharing the same vision which is to improve the social communication in this world. The rest is history and a lot more to come. This is only the beginning…
You can read the full article here by Josie Ensor. Believe me, it’s a very long article and really worth it to read.
About Author
