Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey Working on New Headset ‘Driven by Military Requirements’

Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey Working on New Headset 'Driven by Military Requirements'

Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey Working on New Headset 'Driven by Military Requirements'

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has announced he is working on a new head-mounted display (HMD) for both military and non-military use.

During a fireside chat at the 2024 Augmented World Expo (AWE), Luckey was upfront that the headset would be “driven” by military requirements but have the versatility to do non-military stuff.

🚨 Breaking @PalmerLuckey announces that he is working on a new headset on stage at #AWE2024 that has both military and non military applications. This in response to the question what would you do if you were starting fresh pic.twitter.com/OZrv6wKtJW

— Jesse Nowlin🎙Google Cloud Champion Innovator (@MrJNowlin) June 19, 2024

“…I’m actually building a new headset right now,” Luckey explained during the panel. “It’s driven by military requirements, but it’s also going to be used for non-military stuff. And it’s really cool, it’s really something.”

Luckey teased earlier this month that he was working on a new HMD and would formally announce the device at AWE. However, the extent to which the headset would be used in a non-military capacity was not further elaborated on.

Luckey is well-known in the virtual reality industry for releasing the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Luckey founded Oculus in 2012; roughly two years later the company was acquired by Meta (then known as Facebook) for $2 billion. In 2017, Luckey left Facebook. Neither party explained Luckey’s departure, but it came amid controversial political donations during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Following his departure from Facebook, Luckey co-founded Anduril Industries, a military defense technology company. Luckey recently dipped his toes back into the consumer hardware space, as earlier this month he revealed the ModRetro Chromatic, a $199 handheld shaped like a GameBoy featuring a backlit display and the ability to play Game Boy, and Game Boy color cartridges. Like its competitor, the Analogue Pocket, the ModRetro Chromatic supports FPGA-based emulation.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

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