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 (VR) head-mounted display that is widely credited with reviving the virtual reality industry. In 2017, Luckey was fired from Facebook (owner of Oculus at that time) and founded military contractor Anduril Industries, a military 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.

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 developed an intense interest in electronics and engineering. He took courses at Golden West College and Long Beach City College beginning at the age of 14 or 15, and then at California State University, Long Beach in 2010. He later majored in journalism at CSU Long Beach, where he also wrote and was 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 electrical 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.

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.

While attending college, he also worked part-time as an engineer in the Mixed Reality Lab (MxR) of the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) at the University of Southern California designing cost-effective virtual reality systems for BRAVEMIND, a U.S. Army Research Laboratory effort to treat veterans suffering from PTSD.

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 and field-of-view, high latency and cost, and extreme bulk and weight. He completed his first prototype, called PR1, at age 17 in his parents' garage, 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.