Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is announcing something in a few weeks, which he says will prove he isn’t out of the ‘XR game’.

Luckey confirmed back in June he’s building a new XR headset, although the device in question seems to be primarily “driven by military requirements” in addition to “non-military stuff,” he said at its AWE 2024 announcement.

Now, as first reported by MIXED, Luckey says he’s set to announce something in “a few weeks”.

Notably, Luckey’s comment was in response a partially erroneous claim that “Quest app sales are down 27% year over year.” This figure is in reference to the free Meta Horizon smartphone app, which did see a year-over-year decrease by 27% during the Christmas period, but not the XR app ecosystem as a whole.

It’s speculated that Luckey’s headset might be released through his defense company, Anduril, which he founded in 2017. Alternatively, he could launch it as a side project, similar to his Game Boy-style handheld device, ModRetro Chromatic. However, this seems less likely given the headset’s apparent focus on military applications.

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That said, it’s unclear whether these XR projects are related at the time of this writing, as Luckey has yet to elaborate.

What is clear: Luckey knows XR. Having founded Oculus in 2012 at the age of 19, his company played a major role in sparking the modern era of VR with the release of the original Oculus Rift DK1. Shortly before releasing its Oculus Rift DK2 follow-up in mid-2014, Oculus was acquired by Meta (then Facebook) for more than $2 billion.

Luckey remained involved in VR at Meta for several years until political controversies led to his departure. After leaving the company, he founded Anduril, which has since achieved a multi-billion-dollar valuation. While Luckey has not been directly involved in XR since leaving Meta, he continues to be a prominent voice in the field.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • g-man

    I have no interest in anything else he does now that he's part of the military industrial complex.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      I understand your feeling… but I and many people in Ukraine/Europe have different feelings on this. If all the good people are outside the military industrial complex – who will be left there? Are you sure you want to leave that to the Putins in this world?

      • gothicvillas

        Oh come on! I'm more scared of communist EU and nazi Ukraine than Putin

    • Jeremiah

      So you just want evil people involved with the military then, or you want a weak military which leads to the current instability in the world? Thank God that's about to change!

      • Dale Kirkley
        • Jeremiah

          Haha, we just had four years of a puppet president, the guy could hardly put together a coherent sentence. Now we have an actual leader and yes, he has great advisers and allies.

          • Dale Kirkley

            “Advisers”.

          • Jeremiah

            Haha, ah so much winning atm, praise God!

          • Dale Kirkley

            Yes, praise be indeed to the Magical Sky Wizard who apparently created cancer and necrotizing fasciitis amongst some of his/her works.

            I can really feel the "love".

            Haha.

          • Jeremiah

            Haha, of course you’ve rejected your creator, how else to explain supporting such a morally bankrupt side.

          • Dale Kirkley

            You assume I support a side, how obvious of you, lol.

          • Jeremiah

            Jesus said “If you’re not for me you’re against me”.

  • Dragon Marble

    That's how rumors spread. "Meta Horizon mobile app download down 27%" has now become "Quest app sales down 27%".

    • Should come as no surprise that that grifter Renaud spreads FUD.
      He's been "PROMISING, FER SURE THIS TIME!1!"
      "Lo-Fi" for the better part of half a decade now ….

      Like a dope, I believed in him and gave my money freely.
      Thank God I finally recognized what is afoot and got a refund.

    • John Doe

      Welcome to Road to VR Infomercials!

  • Anthony Hunt

    XR? You mean VR.

  • John Doe

    This is NOT how you were talking 2 years when we played Contractors together. You actually got so butthurt that after I answered your question, you left the server.

  • John Doe

    Stay cringe, old man!

  • Jeremiah

    Luckey was removed because of heavy censorship and political partisanship at Meta, which appears to be improving of late thank God.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      Luckey was removed because he gave USD 10K to a political organization that wanted to use new methods like shitposting to draw new audiences. Their agenda was spamming public forums with nonsense, pretty much exactly the types of bots Luckey's employer Facetime was fighting all the time. He argued that he found the approach interesting/innovative, causing him to give them money.

      The fact that this was a group supporting Trump wasn't really the issue, and there were lots of Republicans at Meta even back then. What he did was pretty much like some fire fighter manager financing a fireworks sale in the middle of a fire hazard zone. Supporting an organization that engages in something your employer spends a lot of money on preventing will lead to you getting fired anywhere, esp. if you are in a public manager function.

      Not that firing Luckey really helped, as we still got overrun by an avalanche of bots posting utter rubbish to cause emotional uproar, rightly assuming that outraged people will immediately retweet anything without ever checking if it is even remotely true or contradicts the laws of physics.

      • Jeremiah

        He was fired because he wasn’t towing the company line at the time, which was Democrat all the way. What he spends his personal money on is his business and I for one am thankful he helped prevent the election of Hillary Clinton, horrid horrid woman from a crime family.

  • Dale Kirkley

    I concede nothing, lol, and in the land of the free, you can't make me either.