Three of Oculus’ best brains (standing, from left): founder Palmer Luckey, senior vision engineer Dov Katz, and VP of product Nate Mitchell. The writer (seated) experiences some of their latest breakthroughs Jim Merithew

When Palmer Luckey created the first prototype of the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift in his parents' garage in 2011, he probably never expected Facebook to buy it for $2bn three years later. Now, it's one of the most anticipated pieces of hardware by gamers, but that's just scratching the surface of what the technology could unlock

In part one of WIRED.co.uk's interview with Luckey and Nate Mitchell, VP of Product at Oculus and a cofounder of the company, the driving figures behind VR discuss the device's path to consumer models, reaction to the Facebook acquisition, and Oculus' potential outside of games.


WIRED.co.uk: To open bluntly, given the incredible fervour surrounding Oculus Rift, how close are you to bringing it to a consumer level?

Palmer Luckey: We're not able to say. The more complicated answer is that we started around two years ago and shipped our first dev kits almost a year ago, and that's extremely quick. The only reason it may seem long is, normally by the time the public hears about a console, dev kits have been out for years and it's just been kept secret. We're doing the opposite, reaching out to as many people as possible at once.

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Nate Mitchell: I also think it's important for us to not ship it until it is right. Our perception of what's "good enough" has changed several times. It's really about delivering what people expect. When you try dev kit one [DK1], you get a feeling of how it could be cool in five years. When you try DK2 you feel like it's finally coming together -- still not quite there, not a consumer product yet. With Crescent Bay it's going to be as significant a leap as it was from DK1 to DK2. It does take extra time. Some of the components we're going to be using in the consumer version didn't exist six months ago.

PL: Some of them don't exist yet! They're still being manufactured. There are things that are just now starting to come out as engineering samples.


NM: We've done a huge amount of custom hardware development.

It's not one of those things where we're shipping on Valve time. We're not waiting until we find what's good enough. We know what's good enough and we're waiting until it gets there.

Given that is your most-asked question, do you feel you might have revealed Oculus Rift to the public too soon?

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PL: No. The whole point is that we're trying to get this out to as many people as possible. What would the point of hiding it be?


We want it to work. Think about how long it takes to make games. At this point, developers could first get a DK1 about a year ago. That means there's been a year to develop games when most have at least two or three year development cycles. Consider what would happen if we announced it now -- we would be showing off DK2 hardware and nobody would have had any time whatsoever to make games. Also, I don't think it's a problem that it's our most asked question.

People are going to ask us over and over again but we're doing what's right for us, our community, our developers and the people making VR content. For them, it's not a good thing for us to remain in stealth mode and then throw everything on them.

Isn't there a risk consumers might get impatient?

PL: Get impatient and do what? It's been a mainstay in science fiction for decades, even though there's been no consumer product.

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The Virtual Boy was not virtual reality! There was no head tracking, low field of view -- it wasn't virtual reality. But people still bought the Virtual Boy, by the thousands, even though it was not great.

I don't think people are going to say "it's taking too long for Oculus Rift to come out, so I'm not interested in virtual reality anymore." The people who are asking the questions most often are the ones who certainly won't be the ones losing interest. Even if they do stop following the stories about Oculus Rift, when it comes out they'll definitely buy it.

NM: Two points. The first one is it'll be worth the wait. The other one is that we would not be where we are today without the Kickstarter, which was a huge public event. It's raised $2.4m (£1.5m) so it's easy to look back in time and be like "What if we'd held it all back and kept it secret?" Well, we wouldn't have done so well and wouldn't have this community. [They're] helping us make it all possible.

The Facebook deal has been in place for a few months now. How has it changed things for you?

PL: It has not changed what we wanted to do. It just made the things we wanted to do possible. We had a list of things that we'd love to do but were just impossible, financially. Facebook has unlocked them. So now we can do things like develop our own tech instead of using scraps from the smartphone industry. We can invest in content and publishing. We've been able to hire the best people.

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We've been growing at a breakneck pace and that was just not sustainable.

We do want to revolutionise gaming, which is why Palmer made it in the first place -- he wanted to step inside Fallout 3 KeepInline

If we had kept raising money, we would have had to make a lot of decisions to guarantee immediate income and keep the lights on, instead of the best thing in the long-term for VR. That's what a lot of companies do whose products aren't very consumer-friendly.

They come from companies having to make money immediately so they can keep running. We're not at the point where we can ship product and we need hundreds of millions of dollars to do the things we want to do.

The online response was rather negative when the announcement was made. Did you expect that kind of feedback?

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PL: Of course. People are always going to be upset no matter what you do. I'm not going say that what they thought was wrong and if I was in their shoes I'd probably be upset too. But most of them don't know anything about manufacturing or business. They don't know the behind-the-scenes realities of what we're trying to accomplish. Most of them have this imaginary fantasy idea of how they think business plays out, what our model should be, but they don't have any idea of how things really are and how they have to be.

Where do you see VR expanding beyond its early adoption by the games industry?

PL: I've been thinking about the applications of virtual reality for quite a long time. In sci-fi depictions of VR is not just games; it's a parallel digital dimension where people actually end up spending a significant amount of their time talking to each other. That's why it's funny when people say 'VR?' like they used to say 'Facebook?' You know, it's like 'it's just for gaming, are you inept?' The big sci-fi writers have known for decades that VR's major revolution is going to be in communications. That said, we're all gamers at Oculus and we all want to play games. The games industry is the only one with the tools and the talent to create immersive 3D virtual worlds. That'll spread to other industries like architecture, art and design. But in the beginning, it's going to be driven largely by the game industry.


NM: I think game developers are going to be pushing a lot. We can build a product that meets developers and gamers' standards

[but] the guy who wants to design a car using the Rift will have no problem. From a very practical perspective, we do want to revolutionise gaming, which is why Palmer made it in the first place -- he wanted to step inside Fallout 3. I also think gamers are willing to suspend disbelief and be willing to strap a crazy tank thing to their face to give it a shot, more than anyone else. It feels like it is the right starting place -- you don't want to boil the ocean right off the bat.

Check back tomorrow for part two, where Luckey and Mitchell discuss the future of virtual reality and Oculus' expansion into mobile tech and communications.