Palmer Luckey

Palmer Freeman Luckey (born September 19, 1992) is an American entrepreneur best known as the founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality head-mounted display that is widely credited with reviving the virtual reality industry. In 2017, Luckey departed Oculus and founded defense contractor Anduril Industries, a defense technology company focused on autonomous drones and sensors for military applications. Luckey ranked number 22 on ''Forbes'' 2016 List of America's Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40.

Early life and education

Luckey was born and raised in Long Beach, California, with three younger sisters. His father worked at a car dealership.

As a child he was homeschooled by his mother, took sailing lessons, and had an intense interest in electronics and engineering. He took community college courses at Golden West College and Long Beach City College beginning at the age of 14 or 15, and started attending courses at California State University, Long Beach in 2010. He wrote and served as Online Editor for the university's student-run newspaper, the '' Daily 49er''.

During his childhood and teenage years, Luckey experimented with a variety of complex electronics projects including railguns, Tesla coils, and lasers, with some of these projects resulting in serious injuries. He built a PC gaming "rig" worth tens of thousands of U.S. dollars with an elaborate six-monitor setup. His desire to immerse himself in computer-generated worlds led to an obsession with virtual reality (VR).

In 2009, he founded the ModRetro Forums with a friend, creating an online community for "portabilization", a hobby that revolves around turning old hardware devices such as game consoles and PCs into self-contained portable units mixing new and old technology.

He later attended California State University, Long Beach, where he majored in journalism and served as Online Editor of the ''Daily49er''. During his time there, he also worked as a part-time engineer in the Mixed Reality Lab (MxR) at the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) at the University of Southern California as part of a design team for cost-effective virtual reality systems for BRAVEMIND, a U.S. Army Research Laboratory effort to treat veterans suffering from PTSD.

Career

Oculus Rift

Beginning in 2009, when he was 16, he began building VR headsets of his own design. Existing head-mounted displays in the market suffered from low contrast, high latency, low field-of-view, high cost, and extreme bulk and weight. He completed his first prototype, called PR1, at age 17 in his parents' garage in 2010, which featured a 90-degree field of view, low latency, and built-in haptic feedback. Ultimately, he built more than 50 head-mounted displays.

To fund these projects, he earned at least US$36,000 by fixing and reselling damaged iPhones and working part-time as a groundskeeper, youth sailing coach, and computer repair technician.

Luckey developed a series of prototypes exploring features like 3D stereoscopy, wireless, and extreme 270-degree field-of-view, while also decreasing the size and weight of his systems. He shared regular updates on his progress on MTBS3D, a forum frequented by a small number of virtual reality enthusiasts. He called his 6th-generation unit the "Oculus Rift", which was intended to be sold as a do-it-yourself kit on Kickstarter to fellow enthusiasts. He launched Oculus VR in April 2012 to facilitate the official launch of the Kickstarter campaign.

John Carmack of id Software, a game developer famous for his work on the Doom and Quake videogame series, requested a prototype headset from Luckey, who lent it to Carmack free of charge. Carmack used it to demonstrate id Software's '' Doom 3: BFG Edition'' on the device at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2012. With the resulting attention of thousands of people suddenly drawn to the Rift, Luckey dropped out of university to focus on it full-time.

Luckey also demonstrated the unit to Valve, and received a Kickstarter endorsement from Valve's managing director Gabe Newell, who said, "It looks incredibly exciting. If anybody is going to tackle this set of hard problems, we think that Palmer is going to do it. We strongly encourage you to support this Kickstarter." When Luckey launched his Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift, it also received endorsements from other prominent figures in the game industry, including Cliff Blezinski, David Helgason, and Mark Bolas.

During the Kickstarter campaign, Luckey demonstrated the Rift to gamers and the press at many gaming conventions, including PAX, Gamescom, and QuakeCon 2012.

The Kickstarter campaign was successful, raising US$2.4 million, or 974% of its original target. After raising more than $1 million, Luckey hired Brendan Iribe in August 2012 to be CEO of Oculus. Oculus VR expanded, taking on more employees and a larger office space. Luckey described his day-to-day process as not having "changed all that much," remaining a "slow plod towards making this thing a reality." Luckey continued to work on all aspects of the business, saying, "I have my hands in everything, from product engineering to game development to marketing," Later, he shifted his focus towards virtual reality input hardware, calling it a "pet project" that eventually culminated in the Oculus Touch spatial controller.

Facebook

Oculus VR was acquired by Facebook in March 2014 for US$3 billion. Although Luckey's share was not made public, ''Forbes'' magazine estimated the founder's net worth to be $700 million in 2015.

ZeniMax lawsuit

Shortly after the acquisition, ZeniMax Media filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The lawsuit contended that Luckey and Oculus used ZeniMax's "trade secrets, copyrighted computer code, and technical know-how relating to virtual reality technology", and sought financial damages for breach of contract, copyright infringement, and unfair competition