Palmer Luckey is a former Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) employee who eventually become the Oculus VR founder.
Source: Oculus VR
Here are seven things to know about him:
- Luckey founded Oculus VR, which created theOculus Rift headsets. He joined Facebook in 2014 after the social media site acquired Oculus VR in a $3 billion deal.
- He departed Facebook in 2016 after it was revealed that he was quietly funding efforts to take down Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Luckey was also sending anti-Clinton messages on Reddit under a pseudonym.
- The Long Beach-native was homeschooled and had a staunch interest on electronics and engineering from a young age.
- As a child and teenager, he created several complex electronics projects such as coil guns, Tesla coils, lasers and built a PC gaming rig worth tens of thousands of dollars with a six-monitor setup.
- Oculus VR first came to life as Luckey was frustrated with current virtual reality headsets, so he designed his first prototype called PR1 at age 17 in his parents’ garage in 2010, which had a 90-degree field of view, low latency and built-in haptic feedback.
- He was contacted by John Carmack of id Software, developer of Doom and Quake, for a prototype headset, to which Luckey dropped out of university to focus on it full time.
- Some believe the character Keenan Feldspar in Silicon Valley, played by Haley Joel Osment, was inspired by Luckey.
FB stock is up 1.6% on Wednesday.
