We all know about Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, and perhaps you’re aware of the innovative Internet.org (which aims to provide internet access to the two-thirds of the world that don’t have access) but do you know about Oculus Rift?
Whilst other 18 year-olds were, well, being 18, in 2011, Palmer Luckey, a self confessed ‘sci-fi geek’ was building his first Virtual Reality prototype in Long Beach, California. Taking to crowd-funding platform Kickstarter to fund his project, he raised over an amazing £1.6 million- 974% over the campaign target.
By the time Mark Zuckerberg caught wind of the innovative headset, Luckey had raised $90 million through various investors and venture capital firms. Having had a demo of the Oculus virtual reality headset, he came to the headquarters to meet Palmer.
“If Mark had been like, ‘This is stupid, I don’t get it at all,’ we would have said ‘Yeah, well, screw Mark anyway. What does he know?'” Luckey recalls.
But that wasn’t the case. In March 2014, Facebook bought the start-up company for a whooping $2 billion (equates to roughly £1.3 billion) – a deal that was done humbly, over a pizza at Zuckerberg’s house.
On 25th March 2014 Mark announced on his Facebook profile their involvement, and hopes for Oculus; “Imagine enjoying a court-side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face—just by putting on goggles in your home,” he wrote at the time. “Even better, for Facebook’s purposes, virtual reality could allow users to share entire immersive experiences, rather than just photos.”
Although Oculus Rift isn’t the first virtual reality headset on offer, it is however, a more sophisticated and less expensive alternative, and after years of testing and developing, the Oculus Rift is finally available for pre-order- for £400 Oculus Rift could be yours!
And, if you can’t afford the Oculus Rift, you can check out this hilarious video of people testing an older-version in 2014!