Oculus founder and former Facebook employee Palmer Luckey took to Twitter Wednesday night to express his support for the Oculus Quest, Facebook’s latest VR headset that will go on sale later this month. “I endorse Oculus Quest,” Luckey tweeted — a show of support that’s notable, especially since Luckey’s departure from Facebook wasn’t exactly amicable.
Facebook announced the launch of the Quest at its f8 developer conference earlier this week. Starting at $399 and with integrated tracking for room-scale virtual reality experiences, the device is being touted as the next step for VR adoption, giving users the ability the experience high-end games and experiences without the need for a high-powered gaming PC.
Luckey echoed those remarks when he was asked whether the device was really a better value proposition than the company’s $200 Oculus Go headset.
“It is,” Luckey responded. “The importance of 6DOF head and hand tracking is hard to overstate.” (6DOF, short for 6 degrees of freedom, means that the tracking technology of the headset allows users to lean into an experience, and in the case of the Quest also reach out for objects).
Luckey founded Oculus back in 2012, and joined Facebook after the social media giant acquired the VR startup for $2.3 billion in 2014. He stayed on for some time, but disappeared from public eye after news broke that he had donated $100,000 to a fringe right group of online activists. He was forced out of the company in early 2017, but Facebook executives subsequently insisted that his firing was not due to his political beliefs.
On Wednesday, Luckey acknowledged the controversy, but added that it didn’t change his views on the Quest. “I am endorsing the product, not the company,” he tweeted. “That said, I want Oculus to be successful. I want what is best for the VR industry, and the actions of a handful of executives should not outweigh that greater good.”
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