What in the hell would compel Oculus founder Palmer Luckey to traverse the Alaskan weather in flip flops? With the official launch of the retail version of the Oculus Rift just a couple days away, Luckey bestowed it upon himself to deliver the first copy of the Rift to one lucky Alaskan purchaser just two days before the first batch make their way into homes.
Ross Martin is a name that will go down in VR history as the lucky Alaskan purchaser who received the first ever copy of the Rift. Why was Martin chosen to receive the first ever copy of the hardware? Well, according to Oculus, Martin’s purchase was the very first one that went in on the first day pre-orders opened. Though Martin was unaware of this fact until a call between him and Luckey brought on by an email that he detailed within an interview with Polygon.com:
“Last morning I got an e-mail that was very nondescript and low-key, and it just said that ‘hey we want to ship your Rift to you on Saturday, we want to deliver it to you, please call us to confirm some details,’” Martin said. “It really didn’t sink in, you know, it just felt weird for the first half of the day, and then towards the end of the day it started to become reality. I felt like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was amazing. Me? They chose me? I couldn’t sleep that night.”
In indirect response to Martin’s inclination to relate this event to a film, in his own separate interview with Polygon, Luckey made it known that the decision to deliver the Rift himself was not at all publicity stunt. Instead, this decision rested on the morals that this moment was an important one in his long relationship with VR:
“I said hey guys, I’ve been working on this since 2009, we’ve been working on Oculus since 2012, I’ll be damned if some random delivery guy is going to get the satisfaction of delivering the first Rift. That’s mine.” Luckey said. “So I could figure I could take a day out of the launch process and take a quick vacation in Alaska.”
Luckey even went as far as to record a video of this event and post it to his personal Facebook, which you can watch here. As much as Luckey seemed to enjoy his “vacation” in Alaska, it was short lived. Just moments after shooting the video, he had to head back to the airport to catch a flight back to the Oculus offices in preparation for the release of the remainder of the first wave of headsets. Included in this group of individuals expecting to receive their headsets this coming Monday are Kickstarter backers.
For all your up-to-date news on all things VR, keep your eyes peeled to the Mouse n Joypad website. As always, if you have any queries, thoughts, concerns pertaining to VR, Luckey, or maybe you’re an early Kickstarter backer who feels discouraged that you were overlooked when Luckey made the decision to hand-deliver this copy of the Rift and would like to express so, please feel free to leave them down in the ‘comments’ section below