The History of the Future Page 3

  Really, the only “limit” to the limitless possibilities of VR was computing power. The faster computers got, the better the graphics would be and the more real virtual worlds could feel. And if it felt real enough—if you could bestow users with a true sense of presence—then VR could achieve almost anything. It could reinvent how we communicate, educate . . . Luckey had to cut himself off. He wanted to be careful not to waste time getting lost in that stuff. But the bottom line was this: if technology existed that could allow anyone to be anywhere at any time, then not even the sky was the limit.

  Luckey felt inspired like never before. As he tinkered away inside his trailer—pumping himself up with power metal music—he was reminded of something that visionary game programmer John Carmack had once said about virtual reality: “It’s a moral imperative,” Carmack had described, touting the ways in which VR could empower anyone—of any socioeconomic standing—to experience anything.

  To try and unlock these uncanny possibilities, one of the first and most important things Luckey did was join an online community called Meant to Be Seen 3D (MTBS3D). With a focus on stereoscopic 3-D gaming, the forum wasn’t exactly a perfect match for his VR interests. But back in 2009, when the number of VR enthusiasts worldwide numbered somewhere in the hundreds, this was the best option. MTBS3D didn’t have the same chummy atmosphere as ModRetro, but that’s not what Luckey was looking for. What he needed was a more cutting-edge, graphics-focused crowd, and that’s exactly what MTBS3D proved to be.

  Over the next three years—as Luckey put together more than fifty prototypes—the open dialogue and communal support on MTBS3D played a vital role in the evolution of his work. And along the way, in his quest to learn what had gone wrong before, he amassed the world’s largest private collection of head-mounted displays. Since HMDs were so obscure and undesirable, these weren’t the kind of things that tended to pop up on eBay or Craigslist. He’d check those sites compulsively just in case, but more often than not his geeky treasures would come from places like government surplus auctions or used medical equipment vendors. For example, one of his greatest hauls to date had come from a VA hospital in Kansas. The hospital was offloading old relics, and Luckey managed to snag an entire lot of Visionics headsets that had been designed for enhancing the vision of veterans.

  Luckey’s ability to hunt down obscure headsets was second to none. But as far as hobbies went, this was not a cheap one. Rare HMDs could cost several hundred dollars, and the resources to repair them even more. Then add to that the cost of Luckey’s own creations and experimentations, and suddenly this interest turned into a four-figure-a-month obsession.

  To fund all this, Luckey often worked at the Long Beach Sailing Center, sweeping yards, scrubbing boats, fixing diesel engines. It only paid minimum wage, but the work there was something he could count on; his other go-to sources of revenue (i.e., walking dogs, or repairing busted phones) were a lot more sporadic. As a result, he was able to pull the trigger when items like the Fakespace Boom 3C popped up on eBay.

  The Boom 3C was no ordinary HMD. Rather it was a heavy-duty, head-coupled display that weighed so much it had to be counterbalanced by a several-foot-long mechanical arm that moved with the user. All in all, it looked less like a piece of high-tech equipment than it did an unwieldly exercise machine. But setup aside, the Boom 3C had been capable of delivering some of the most immersive experiences in the ’90s. Which is why, back then, it had cost upwards of $90,000. So when Luckey snagged one on eBay for less than a hundred dollars, he freaked out a little bit.13

  Unsurprisingly, this steal of a deal needed major repair. Seeking advice, Luckey found an email address for the one person who knew more about Fakespace’s Boom 3C than anyone in the world: Fakespace founder Mark Bolas, who was now teaching classes and running a research lab at nearby USC.

  “Hi!” Luckey wrote, reaching out in June 2011. “I am a huge fan of your work, and as someone who loves the concepts behind VR and AR technologies, I greatly respect your contributions to the field. I have been wanting to get in touch with you for a while, there are a few things I wanted to talk to you about.”

  One of those things was the Boom 3C’s color generator, of course, and another was a paper that Bolas had recently coauthored. That paper, “A Design for a Smartphone-Based Head Mounted Display,” discussed how two iPhone 4 displays (one for each eye) could be used to drive an ultra-affordable HMD.14 Luckey liked the solution that Bolas and his colleagues presented but thought he had come up with something even better, something that only required one phone and an external display. “I have several ideas which could be very easily and cheaply implemented,” Luckey wrote, and then described a prototype he had already built that did exactly that.

  It was a bit awkward, offering to try and help one of the very few VR experts in the world, but Luckey hoped that Bolas was the type of guy who would appreciate that kind of gumption. Especially because of the big ask that bookended his email: “I would love a low pay or unpaid internship at somewhere where I could get some experience,” Luckey wrote. “If there is anything you can do to help me out, or point me in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.”

  Luckey knew that this was a long shot. But by the time he reached out to Bolas, he was beginning to suspect that those were the only kind of shots that he would get. Because the VR industry was tiny and, for what few jobs existed, Luckey was competing against much older applicants whose walls were adorned with prestigious college degrees. Meanwhile, here he was: a commuter student at Long Beach State whose only prior formal education consisted of some credits at the Huntington Beach community college. How could he compete? How could he even get his foot in the door? Luckey didn’t know. But he truly believed that when it came to his singular obsession—building low-cost, high-immersion HMDs—there was no one in the world better at this than he. All he needed was a chance, someone willing to look past his age and résumé. Bolas proved to be that someone.

  “I’ve been doing VR for 25 years,” Bolas would later say to the Orange County Register. “He knew as much about the history of my products as I did.”15

  In July 2011, Bolas offered Luckey a lab technician position in his Mixed Reality Lab at USC’s Institute of Creative Technologies (ICT). The twice-weekly job was everything Luckey hoped that it would be. Lots of busy work (cleaning, reporting, etc.), helping with student projects (short VR films), and organizing hardware that had been in the lab for years. The work wasn’t glamorous, but Luckey was fine with that. All he cared about was being there and getting the chance to interact with people who shared the same niche interest as he. Of course, all the menial tasks of the job paid off when he could spend time in the warehouse-sized test chamber and experience what virtual reality could truly offer when money was no object.

  On September 25, 2011, Luckey tried his best to describe what it felt like in an MTBS3D post titled “Truly Immersive (AKA ‘Holy Crap This Is Real’) VR Simulation.”16

  “WHOOSH!” Luckey wrote. “All of a sudden . . . your entire field of view is engulfed . . . [and] you seem to be standing on a post-apocalyptic bridge, what used to be a roadway that carries cars. Rust runs the lengths of the thick iron beams above you, and the road is littered with debris . . . You glance down, and quickly step back; your foot had been mere inches away from a sharp, rusty spike protruding from the ground, and your instincts want it as far away from your foot as possible . . . Up till now, you have been alone in the simulation. All of a sudden, though, you hear someone calling out from where you originally spawned, on the other end of the bridge. Now fully confident of the world you are in, you spring about 60 feet back to where you came from, meeting another avatar portraying a US Army soldier in full desert gear, carrying a large handgun. You salute, and reach out to shake hands . . . And then as quick as he came, the soldier thanks you for the help, and blips out of existence. You know in your mind that he was really just a software engineer controlling a virtual body, but your subconscious is having a pretty hard time believing that . . .: It sounds crazy, I know, but The Matrix is so much closer than we all think. . . . People need to experience this to believe it.”

  That last line—echoing Morpheus’s famous words: “No one can tell you what the Matrix is, you have to experience it for yourself”—summed up one of the biggest hurdles Luckey faced in getting friends and family excited about virtual reality. This is why, when he wasn’t at the lab or tinkering with his own prototypes, Luckey’s favorite thing to do was share his work with others. And his favorite person to share it with was his long-distance girlfriend: Nicole Edelmann.

  Luckey and Edelmann met at debate camp in 2009, with each on opposing sides of a heated policy debate. Unsurprisingly, their relationship did not get off to a great start. But later that day, Luckey noticed his opponent reading in a courtyard—her intense grayish eyes, that platinum bob of hair—paging through an issue of the Japanese manga Lucky Star. From there, things progressed in a more fortuitous direction. She, too, was being homeschooled. She also loved making things (albeit costumes, not electronics). And though she lived in Colorado, and he in California, they started dating about six months after that. A fact that Luckey liked to bring up on ModRetro. Sometimes just to brag, but usually in search of unusual romantic advice.

  How Do I Ship Ice Cream on an Airplane

  As some of you may know, I am no stranger to airplane shenanigans.

  I am leaving on a trip this Thursday, and I need to somehow bring several boxes of ice cream, and keep them frozen . . . [because] I want to bring some to Nicole. The only place online sells a box for twice as much . . . WITH $35 SHIPPING! Overnight dry ice shipping is expensive.

  I read that the TSA is trained to always leave professionally packed frozen seafood alone (Like, if you buy 2lbs of frozen crab from a fish place), and I was considering packing it up with some cold packs in one of those insulated lunch bag things, then wrapping it in brown paper, and printing out an official looking “Palmer’s Wharf” label on a big adhesive sheet, to make it look like it was packed at a fishery.

  Am I over-planning?

  With the help of his friends (and a small helping of dry ice), Luckey was able to successfully transport his temperature-sensitive gift through the sky. But typically, to avoid the cost of a flight, he would visit Edelmann by car. So once a month, Luckey would drive out to Colorado in his red 2001 Honda Insight, watching the car’s odometer pass 150,000 miles, then 175,000, and eventually over 200,000.

  Occasionally, Edelmann would make the trip to see him in his trailer. Although she loved the boy who lived in it, she was not particularly fond of his “residence.” In fact, the first time she visited Luckey’s trailer she was so disgusted with the state it was in that she spent the whole trip cleaning it up (except for the dozens of empty Mucho Mango cans stacked up by the sink; he was proud of that collection and wouldn’t let her toss them out). One day, Luckey believed, they would live together someplace nicer. But until then, the best thing he could do was transport her to incredible virtual spaces.

  Well, okay, maybe he wasn’t transporting her anywhere that incredible. His prototype headsets weren’t capable of anything like the high-end, highfalutin stuff at USC. But Edelmann was still continually wowed by the experiences his inventions were able to give her. He was an unusual soul, this Palmer Luckey, and she liked this very much about him. “I’m the ground and he’s the atmosphere,” she would say, to explain their relationship. “And we need each other.”

  Edelmann didn’t necessarily expect that Luckey’s VR obsession would lead to anything, but she admired all the hard work he put in. Because one of the things she liked most about him was how—in an increasingly cynical, superficial, and shortcut-driven world—he seemed to be one of the few who still believed in the American dream. Central to that was his underlying ethos: don’t complain about it, do something about it.

  By 2012, this determination had led to the creation of a prototype that Luckey believed was almost good enough to share with the world: a headset way cheaper than anything else out there. His plan was to use Kickstarter, the popular crowdfunding website, to create a little campaign where he could sell an easy-to-assemble kit for VR enthusiasts like himself. It was a small population of people—like double-digits-worldwide tiny—but even so, Luckey was eager to produce a low-cost, high-performance option for his peers.

  In his lab, he referred to his latest prototype—the sixth in a series of low-cost, high performance designs—as the “PR6.” But thinking that wouldn’t make a particularly attractive name, he decided to christen it the “Rift.” Because, as he told his friends on MTBS3D, “the HMD creates a rift between the real world and the virtual world . . . though I have to admit that it is pretty silly.”17

  To make all this legit, Luckey knew he’d need to set up a company. And coming up with a name for that was a bit trickier because most of the names he initially considered were taken, and all the obvious ones—the ones with “virtual” or “VR” in the name—risked suffering the stigma associated with this technology. This was something he’d always known on some level, but it had become clear to him the previous Thanksgiving.

  While in Kansas to celebrate the holiday with his grandfather, he managed to track down the company that owned most of the rights to that failed virtual arcade company from the ’90s: Virtuality. At this point, Luckey had been toying with the idea of opening a modern-day arcade and was interested in maybe—if it was really, really cheap—buying the rights to the name “Virtuality.” At an Olive Garden in Kansas, Luckey met with the rights holder to discuss this possibility. They wanted $150,000; not just for the name, but for a warehouse full of old Virtuality units, too.

  “I just want the name,” Luckey explained. “How much just for that?”

  “Kid,” he was told. “You don’t want to use the name. Virtuality screwed over all of their suppliers before going out of business. If you go back into business under that name, you’re probably immediately going to get sued.”

  In the following months, Luckey thought a lot about this advice. Not just the potential litigation associated with the name Virtuality, but how the toxicity of that name was indicative of the crippling baggage that virtual reality still carried. As such, Luckey realized it would be wise to try and distance his small company from the buzzwords of yesteryear. While running through possibilities for what to name this little entity, he recalled a conversation from a few months earlier, in which he was chatting with his colleagues at ICT. One of the researchers offhandedly mentioned that he had been “peering through the oculus.” When asked what an oculus was, the researcher explained that it was simply a round window—any round window or opening. Luckey and his colleagues thought that was kind of funny. But even after they each put their fingers around their eyes—asking, jokingly, if that constituted an oculus—they all agreed that oculus was a supercool word and that someone should use it for something. Recalling those nods of agreement, Luckey was ready to put that word to use. He debated between using the word as is, or combining it with lux, the Latin word for “light,” to dub the venture Oculux. But as luck would have it, Oculux was already taken by a medical lighting company, so Oculus it was.

  With a company name and some semblance of a plan, Luckey had bought a domain (oculusvr.com) and planned to launch a website later that month. As he sat in his trailer, he typed up his vision for Oculus to put on the site:

  Unfortunately, virtual reality has risen and fallen many times, with a lot more emphasis on the latter portion. The tech has never gotten far enough to be truly convincing, and great VR hardware has been far out of reach for the average person . . . Until now.

  Oculus is my tilt at trying to change that. The tech has improved, and we can build hardware and software that is better, stronger, and faster than the old guard, companies that create niche, wildly expensive products. Don’t get me wrong, these companies are important, and they have to solve some very tough engineering challenges to satisfy their customers. But the reality is that as gamers and dreamers, we have a different set of challenges to meet. Massive field of view to engulf your visual senses, low latency tracking to maximize presence, light weight and comfortable for long term use, and perhaps most importantly, prices measured in the hundreds of dollars, not tens of thousands. I have worked long and hard with a lot of brilliant people to try and meet those challenges, and now it is time to put it in your hands.18

  Given the small size of the VR community, Luckey’s reason for selling these Oculus Rift kits was hardly financial. There was just no way to strike it rich in such a niche market. But that was okay with him. And it was okay with Nicole. And perhaps, in a best-case scenario, if he could get any traction with this thing—if he were able to crack, maybe, one hundred sales—then perhaps having that under his belt might brighten his prospects for the future. Which, as he sat at his computer in that nineteen-foot trailer, was starting to become something of a concern. Because even though Luckey may have looked content in this moment—some eurobeat music now blasting, his soldering iron currently burning—he couldn’t fully suppress a creeping sense of dread. Outside of this isolated, invincible space, a lot of things didn’t seem to be going his way.

  Take his job at the lab. He loved it. But because temp employees were supposed to be hired or let go after six months, and because ICT didn’t have the budget to keep him on, Bolas had informed Luckey that he’d probably need to find work elsewhere sometime pretty soon. Except, again, that was going to be really hard due to his background. Although his time at ICT might open up some other possibilities, it didn’t seem to be opening them up enough for the jobs that he was really interested in. Just recently, for example, he had rejected for a job at the VR-headset-manufacturer Sensics. And that was for a low-level lab technician position!