Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, who left Oculus earlier this year, is staying in the virtual reality industry. Speaking at the Tokyo Game Show this week, Luckey confirmed his new venture but declined to share more details.
“I have a new company; I can’t talk about my projects too much yet, but I’m still working in the virtual reality industry on some very exciting things,” he said at an appearance at an HTC Vive event, as reported by RoadToVR.
He went on to say that he does not want to be seen “as an Oculus person,” because his ambitions are grander than one company alone.
“Don’t think of me as an Oculus person. Just think of me as a VR person,” he said. “Everything. Sony, HTC, other companies. Everything.”
In June, The New York Times reported that, among Luckey’s start-up ideas, was technology that could be used for border-crossing security. The system apparently uses “light detecting and ranging” technology, along with infrared sensors.
From the report:
“Those familiar with the plan say Mr. Luckey believes his system, which can be mounted on telephone poles, can be built far more cost effectively than Mr. Trump’s proposed wall on the Mexican border–and with fewer obstacles from landowners.”
Luckey sold Oculus to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion. He attracted negative attention last year when it was discovered that he had financially supported a pro-Donald Trump political group responsible for “s***posting” anti-Hillary Clinton memes. This led to a number of developers pulling support for Oculus VR products. Luckey later apologized.
Earlier this year, Facebook was ordered to pay $500 million to Bethesda parent company ZeniMax as part of a lawsuit alleging that virtual reality technology it owns was stolen and used to develop the Oculus Rift. During the years-long process, ZeniMax specifically targeted Luckey, claiming that he “lacked the training, expertise, resources, or know-how to create commercially viable VR technology, his computer programming skills were rudimentary, and he relied on ZeniMax’s computer program code and games to demonstrate the prototype Rift.”
In July, Facebook permanently dropped the price of the Oculus Rift/Touch Controller bundle to $500, bringing it in line with the price of a similar headset/controller PlayStation VR bundle.
Sоurсе: gamespot.com
