This is the first of 44 interviews that I conducted at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference & Expo. I was able to capture over 11.5 hours worth of material from 3/4 of the speakers, 2/3 of the exhibitors and 11% of all attendees, and I’ll be doing a daily podcast over the next month and a half (and maybe beyond). A full list of interviewees is listed down below.

Palmer Luckey is the founder of Oculus VR, and I had an opportunity to conduct a brief interview with him. I noticed that Palmer’s bio mentions that he founded the ModRetro Forums, and it turns out that there’s some interesting connections between ModRetro and the founding of Oculus VR.

He talks about some of his first and forgettable VR experiences, and the process of starting what he claims is the world’s largest private VR HMD collection. He also covers his connection to the /r/oculus reddit community, the reaction to the Facebook acquisition announcement on Reddit, as well as what he sees as what the future of VR.

Reddit Discussion here. And be sure to check out the Rev VR Ubercast featuring an in-depth discussion with Palmer here.

Topics

0:00 – What led to founding the ModRetro forums & how has the console modding scene evolved?

2:29 – How did VR evolve out of being involved with the console modding scene?

3:38 – What do you remember about your first VR experience?

4:20 – When did you start your VR HMD collection and what were some of the first VR headsets that you got?

4:56 – Did you end up fixing a lot of these VR HMDs?

5:17 – What have been some of your favorite VR experiences?

5:47 – How often do you read the Oculus subreddit community?

6:25 – How did you react to the Reddit community’s downvoting and skepticism of the Facebook acquisition?

7:14 – What were some of your takeaways from the panel about the next five years of VR?

8:11 – What has been your experience of this first consumer VR conference & what it means?

Full list of interviews from the 1st Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference

Aaron Davies, Head of Developer Relations at Oculus VR Aaron Lemke, Unello Design founder & Eden River game Amir Rubin, Sixense Entertainment CEO Ben Lang, Road to VR founder & executive editor Bernhard Drax, Draxtor.com Second Life documentarian Blair Renaud, IRIS VR Co-Founder & Lead Designer of Technolust Caitlyn Meeks, Unity Asset Store Manager Cosmo Scharf, Founder of VRLA Cris Miranda, EnterVR podcast “Cymatic” Bruce Wooden, VR evangelist David Holz, Leap Motion CTO and Co-founder Denny Unger, Cloudhead Games President & Creative Director of “The Gallery: Six Elements” game Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab CEO (Second Life) Edward Mason, GameFace Labs Founder and CEO Eric Greenbaum, Jema VR Founder George Burger, Infinadeck founder James Blaha, Diplopia game for lazy eye Jan Goetgeluk, Virtuix CEO & developer of the Virtuix Omni Jesse Joudrey, Jespionage Entertainment founder & creator of VRChat John Murray, Seebright founder & CEO Josh Farkas, Cubicle Ninjas CEO Matt Bell, Matterport founder & CEO Matt “Stompz” Carrell, Stompz founder & co-host of PodVR podcast Max Geiger, producer at Wemo Lab Mike Sutherland, PrioVR & VP of technology at YEI Technology Nathan Burba, Survios CEO Nick Lebesis, Network Flo Nonny de la Peña, Immersive Journalism founder & Annenberg Fellow at USC School of Cinematic Arts OlivierJT, Synthesis Universe creator Palmer Luckey, Oculus VR Founder Paul Mylyniec, MakeVR Head of Development at Sixense Entertainment Peter Sassaman, Gauntl33t Project Haptic Feedback Glove Philip Rosedale, Founder of High Fidelity & Second Life Reverend Kyle Riesenbeck, Rev VR Podcast & Road to VR contributor Scott Phillips, VR Walker Project Sean Edwards, Director of Development Lucid VR & Shovsoft & Lunar Flight & ZVR Simon Solotko, All Future Parties Founder Stefan Pernar, Virtual Reality Ventures founder & Virtual Reality Fashion project Stefano Corazza, Mixamo CEO & Co-founder Tony Davidson, Innervision VR & Ethereon game Tony Parisi, Vizi Founder, & co-creator of the VRML & co-chair of the San Francisco WebGL Meetup Vladimir Vukicevic, Gaming director at Mozilla & inventor of WebGL Walter Greenleaf, Stanford University, MediaX Program & medical applications of VR William Provancher, Tactical Haptics founder & Reactive Grip™ touch feedback

Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio