[2/2] The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality (Oculus. How to build the best VR company in the world and lose everything?) (Games rubric)

Continue. story About the book "The History of Future" should tell about the main canvas of history

Palmer Luckey started with the dream of an affordable VR helmet. As a teenager, he collected old virtual reality headsets and saw their drawbacks - narrow viewing angle, low resolution and high price. In his trailer in the yard of his parents' home, Lucky experimented with lenses and displays, and eventually created a prototype Oculus Rift with a wide viewing angle.90A small delay in updating the image.

Breakthrough. 2012 year. Lucky actively communicated on the forums of VR enthusiasts and once received a personal letter from childhood idol John Carmack, where he asked to send him a prototype Rift. John was so impressed that he showed the Rift in action at E3. 2012 Doom demonstration 3 BFG Edition. This demonstration sparked interest in the project. Around Luckey formed a team of like-minded people: he was joined by Brendan Iribe, Nate Mitchell and Michael Antonov, who decided to found the company Oculus VR to develop the technology. In August 2012 They launched a Kickstarter campaign, offering a VR headset for game developers. (gather 2.4m $).

The success of Kickstarter has led to the arrival of major investors. In 2013 The year Oculus received $75 Millions from venture capital funds led by Andreessen Horowitz. Lucky was responsible for the technology, and Iribe and professional investors took over the management of finance and growth. New stars join Oculus: John Carmack (ex id Software) and Michael Abrash. (ex Valve)This underscored the seriousness of the team. During 2013 Oculus released several versions of the Rift devkit for developers, and interest in VR has only grown.

The culmination of the takeoff was the purchase of Oculus by Facebook Corporation 2014 year. Mark Zuckerberg personally visited the Oculus office for the demonstration and was amazed: he called the Rift “one of the coolest things I’ve seen.” In March 2014 Facebook announces acquisition of Oculus VR for ~$2 billion (cash)This news stunned the industry: on the one hand, the giant resources of Facebook promised to accelerate the development of VR, on the other – part of the community greeted the deal warily. However, financial success was evident: 21Palmer Luckey was on the cover of Forbes, and his fortune was estimated at ~$700 million The company became a division of Facebook, continuing work on the consumer version of Rift.

In 2016 This year, the Oculus Rift CV1 finally came out, marking the beginning of a new era of VR devices on the market. However, along with the achievements, problems have grown. For example, ZeniMax, Carmack’s former employer, filed a lawsuit accusing Oculus of embezzling VR technology. In 2017 The court partially sided with ZeniMax - the amount of compensation was $250 million

The same 2016 Last year, Palmer Luckey was at the center of a scandal - Lucky transferred $ 10 to the organization Nimble America, which she posted. 1 Billboard with a cartoon by Hillary Clinton. He also published harsh political comments under the pseudonym NimbleRichMan. For the image of Oculus and Facebook (where management generally held different views) It was a blow. Facebook tried to minimize the damage: Luckey issued a public apology, writing that he regretted how his actions affected Oculus' reputation. After that, the founder almost disappeared from view in the spring. 2017 Palmer Luckey left Facebook/Oculus. In fact, the founder was ousted from the company he created.

After Palmer was fired, Luckey did not stay in the shadows for long. In 2017 After leaving Facebook, he founded a new company, Anduril Industries, in a completely different field. Anduril is engaged in the development of high-tech security and defense systems - from autonomous drones-observers to stationary towers of tracking with AI. Luckey quickly gained investor support and government contracts in the United States.

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