10 years of Oculus: Founder wants to preview new VR tech
Palmer Luckey looks back at the founding of Oculus and wants to preview new VR technologies.
The recent history of virtual reality begins in Luckey's parents' trailer, where the tech-savvy teenager and tinkerer assembled VR prototypes.
In 2012, he came into contact with John Carmack, who was working intensively on virtual reality at the same time, through an Internet forum. The legendary game developer was enthusiastic about Luckey's VR headset and presented it at the E3 in the summer. The virtual reality hype was on. In July 2012, Luckey and a number of other founders founded the start-up Oculus. The Oculus Kickstarter followed shortly after.
His decision to drop out of school and start a company came earlier. On April 15, 2012, Luckey decided on the name "Oculus," registered the website and spread the word on the Internet forums he frequented. In his blog, he reviews this time on the occasion of the tenth anniversary.
Anduril: Luckey now makes in military technology
"Just a few days short of five years later, I was fired from my own company," the now 29-year-old writes. The probable reason: Luckey's enthusiasm for the U.S. military and Trump met with little approval from Mark Zuckerberg, who had bought Oculus in spring 2014 for almost three billion U.S. dollars.
What Luckey doesn't mention is that another five years later, i.e. today, the same company is working on removing the Oculus name from its VR headsets. Luckey, who got rich from the acquisition, founded a successful defense company after he was kicked out. In a recent interview, he hinted that he enjoyed working on VR more, but was now working on something that was "really important."
Oculus story to be rewritten
Luckey's blog post is intended to kick off a retrospective in which the entrepreneur will share key insights along with important Oculus milestones: from the Oculus Kickstarter, to shipping the first devices, to the Facebook acquisition, to his ejection. "I have a lot to share, especially in terms of parts of the Oculus story that have been heavily distorted in the public eye."
It's quite possible that Luckey's confidentiality agreement with Facebook has expired and new facts will come to light in the months and years ahead - or at least Luckey's version of the VR and company story.
And that's far from all Luckey has up his sleeve. "This year is also the right time to finally unveil some VR technologies I haven’t been able to talk about for a variety of reasons," Luckey writes. Could it be that the Oculus founder is getting back into the VR business? In the past, he promised a solution to VR nausea, among other things. However, nothing followed the announcement from 2018.
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