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.