Here’s something cool. Earlier today, Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey hand-delivered the first Oculus Rift consumer model to the person to placed the world’s first preorder.
Ross Martin, who lives in Anchorage, Alaska, was the first person on the planet to preorder the Rift. Martin, a VR enthusiast and indie game developer, is also now the first person in the world with a consumer version. Check out the video below:
Personally delivering the first Rift to Alaska!
Posted by Palmer Freeman Luckey on Saturday, 26 March 2016
Preorders for the $600 Rift opened in January and if you were able to secure one right away, your unit should ship this coming week. Preorders placed today, however, won’t arrive until sometime in July.
Here are some facts about Martin, as supplied by Oculus VR’s press team and sent to GameSpot:
- Both Palmer and Ross are homeschooled
- Ross has been following Oculus since before DK1 days
- He’s most looking forward to playing now Eve: Valkyrie and loves first-person shooter games
- Ross is a software developer: his company is developing solutions including allowing scientists to collect data and research and make it available for the public. Axiom Data Science is the company.
- He is a native Alaskan
- His dad was a dog musher and he grew up with 23 sled dogs in the front yard
Here is a second video from their meeting today:
Meeting Ross part 2
Posted by Palmer Freeman Luckey on Saturday, 26 March 2016
Oculus made a name for itself in August 2012, when the company launched a Kickstarter for the virtual reality headset. The campaign was hugely successful, and the company was purchased by Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion.
The Rift’s launch this week (see the 30 launch titles here) is just the start for the device, as Oculus plans to deliver new hardware updates down the road. Additionally, the device’s unique-looking Touch controllers are set to go on sale later this year, though a price and release date has not been announced.
It will be joined by HTC Vive in April and PlayStation VR in October.