Having founded Oculus in 2012 and been an important face for the company throughout its growth from fledgling startup to $2 billion acquisition by Facebook and beyond, it was a shock to see Palmer Luckey leave the company just two months ago. Having shied away from the public eye since September 2016 after the ousting of a polarizing political position, Luckey has gone on record in an interview for the first time since leaving the company.

Palmer Luckey, circa 2012 | Photo courtesy Oculus

Speaking with MoguraVR during a trip to Tokushima, Japan to attend the anime event Machi Asobi, Luckey opened up in Part 1 about his personal hobby of cosplay—a freedom he didn’t have while at Facebook—the Japanese VR market, and the future of VR headsets. In Part 2, he talked about virtual relationships, an obsession with Pokémon Go, and he teases what he’s working on next. Now in the third and final part of the interview, Luckey talks about the far future of VR with neural links & brain-computer interfaces, recorded memories, and his aim to revolutionize VR once again.

Half-Life 2: VR dev Marulu translated the article, which was originally published in Japanese, for Road to VR.

VR’s Mid to Long Term Form Factors & Interfaces

MoguraVR:

Palmer what do you think will be the final form of VR?

Palmer Luckey:

The final form will be a direct neural link. But that is still off in the very far future. I don’t know if it will become reality in our lifetime. It’s not that it is just hard on a technological level; we don’t know if it is possible at all. While technology might not yet be on that level there are some interesting research findings… it is a rather complicated to interface machines and consciousness using the brain.

MoguraVR:

If a neural link is the final form but still is very far away, what do you think VR will be like in a few decades?

Palmer Luckey:

What we will be able to realize is a combination of head mounted display and implant technology. By integrating sensors that can analyze muscle data at the arm and ears in combination with a extremely high quality VR HMD, an experience extremely close to reality should be possible. (It for example would become possible to feel the impact of a punch.) With this there would be no need to directly connect to the brain, and it would be safer.

Oculus Chief Scientist Michael Abrash on stage at Facebook’s F8 conference pointing to glasses as the ideal form factor for AR devices

MoguraVR:

Is the perfect form factor for VR HMDs sunglasses as Michael Abrash from Oculus always likes to say?

Palmer Luckey:

I also think so. Some people are thinking about contact lenses, but I don’t think that’s it. Even if there were a contact lens version it is obvious that the sunglasses would offer a better experience. Sunglasses would have the advantage in performance, display resolution and battery life.

SEE ALSO
Oculus Chief Scientist: How and When Augmented Reality Will Transform Our Lives

Convergence of AR and VR Functionality

MoguraVR:

Let’s talk about the functions next. Lately several concepts besides VR have been presented such as AR, MR and Augmented VR. What do you think about this?

Palmer Luckey:

I don’t really care how people call it. In the end it will always just be VR or AR glasses, and I think at some point both will be in the same device. You will be able to go from the real world to the virtual world and you will also be able to experience a mix of the virtual and real world. The name for that might be MR, XR, AR or VR, the name varies from person to person [laughs].

MoguraVR:

Eventually it will all become the same thing.

Palmer Luckey:

The best portrayal of AR can be found in [the movie] Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale. At the moment most AR devices are just about displaying HUD. On the other hand, the AR technology that appears in the theatrical version of SAO is closer to MR, and builds a virtual world based on reality. ‘Augma’ is a AR device in the literal sense.

[Spoiler Alert]

My favorite scene was the last. You can see that the ‘full dive’ system is secretly built into Augma. That’s exactly like how it will be in the future. Augma is VR, AR, and something in between. With only one device one can play AR games like ‘Ordinal Scale’ and VR games such ‘Sword Art Online’ and ‘Gungale Online’ and several others [the games within SAO’s fictional universe].

Augma was not only portrayed as a gaming device but also as useful for everyday activities, like going shopping or for going on a walk. I think that at some point VR and AR will lead up to a device like Augma.

MoguraVR: 

A lot of things are going to become possible with AR and VR. And the combination of HMD and implants might take over 20 years.

Palmer Luckey:

It is hard to predict the future. If you step too far out with your predictions people will say ‘He didn’t know anything’ [laughs].

I know how an implant would work, and that’s why it will be possible in the future… it will take some time until ordinary people will become able to do it. The least I can say is that I am sure that it will be at least another five years until everyone will want to get an implant.

Continued on Page 2: VR in the Next Five Years »

1
2
3
Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Lucidfeuer

    I don’t understand how “mechanical” in their thinking but clearly poor thinkers those great engineers like Luckey or Musk are, to stop at “Neural link”. What do they think is at stake here? Do they know they still have no clue how to convert brain electro-chemical interface in any form of data whatsoever, that we don’t know how consciousness operate and quantum interpretation barely manage to scratch it’s surface, but most importantly the implications of “Substitution Reality” imply that technology alone will never allow us to achieve anything significant in the alteration or reprogramming of reality.

    But then, we don’t even have a real VR device or market yet, so…

    • Mei Ling

      Well that’s the problem; we don’t fully understand how the brain works and that’s why there’s the HBP and numerous other collaborative research organisations working on solving the intricacies of the human brain step-by-step. It will take a very long time before any meaningful discoveries are made and until then it’s not realistic to expect a smooth stable road ahead for the whole neural link business as proposed by Elon Musk, and in fact it may even end prematurely.

      • Michigan Jay Sunde

        I think of it like the problem of animal speech. Animals bark or make sounds, but they have no shared language – they all speak their own. Animals that grow up together can share some “words” but they won’t have those words in-common with other animals at the park. Where information gets stored and referenced in our brains, how our brain interprets new information… it seems we grow these systems each in our own way. No unified operating system for the brain. Am I wrong?

        • Harry Hol

          Given hoe extremely similar human children develop (you can predict all sorts if behaviour with week-precision (ie: in week 32 the child will do x) and the fact that we all develop the same hardwired skills like language and reason, I’d say there are several parts if the brain that are quite predictable in their way of handling data.

          • Get Schwifty!

            From what I gather it appears that there are certain common large scale structures, but at a certain level encoding and so forth are “random” per person. I suspect this will be the ultimate problem… each brain is a fingerprint, so unless you “know” the exact self-ordering each brain takes, you cannot fully integrate except through the sensory inputs “farther out”, i.e. optic nerve, spinal nerve, etc. and let the brain do the rest… at least for a long time.

          • Lucidfeuer

            Rather I believe there’s a universal encoding with slight structure variation. But “2” is always 2 in all brains capable of counting. Rather I think this encoding is simply way more complicated than simple math.

          • Get Schwifty!

            At the bottom it is just a web of synapses… where and what form “two” take may depend on the person. Obviously two is the same for all people as a pure idea, but math and numbers are not the same as other conceptual ideas. An idea like “democracy” is almost assuredly not as it would depend upon a merging of many secondary concepts and experiences. That “slight structure variation” is probably responsible for tremendous differences… much like the slight variance in DNA for humans vs. lower primates…

          • Lucidfeuer

            DNA doesn’t vary for the same character strand from human to human. The same RNA sequence for one means the same RNA sequence for another, epigenetic switch have the same effect for all people, but the countless combination are just hard to fathom, it doesn’t they’re random.

            The same goes for the brain, 2 can not exist only as a pure idea, everything that exist, exists, so it has to have some physical information existence of sorts. In fact the brain is probably 100x more complicated than that: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/quantum-brain/506768/

          • kool

            I think there are types of minds which once they find your mind type it will be easier to decode. We all know like minded people.

        • Lucidfeuer

          Not exactly true, why do animals, newborn babies, insects or primates alike all know since birth what “water” is?

          Another cue: when we think about “dragons” an abstract imagined idea that doesn’t exist in real-life, what makes it so that everybody will more or less have the same image of a big green/red reptile with wings, pointy tail and long beak?

          Unlike Get Schwifty I believe neural encoding is way more organised and universal than we think, except this encoding is nowhere near the current mathematical or coding language we use, it might even be more complex than quantum coding, which in itself is already quite complex.

      • Lucidfeuer

        Agreed, although a lot of science, especially regarding technology, has always kind of moved forward in abstract (without fully or at all understanding it, but still being able to create mechanical processes from theoretical understanding).

        And again it’s not just about the brain: 80 years from now, there are neural link with complex pods, for elderly who chose to transition to a Virtual afterlife a la San Junipero in Black Mirrors or Vanilla Sky. The truth is how do you operate and rule such a reality given the limitation of consciousness, for exemple the life that human are unable to bear anything eternal.

        • Solaire Of Astora

          Certainly not always. Jet engines came before theory. Birds can fly fine without any theory telling them how to do so. Trial and error, tinkering, is an extremely powerful process. And no, before someone thinks I’m saying ‘theory is useless’, I’m not. I’m saying it in no way must precede invention (just preempting binary thinkers from coming at me with ‘refutations’ of things I never said or implied).

    • It will be eventually understood how it all works. The brain and all the human senses are basically mechanical and electrical mechanisms. You just start with light entering the eye, understand that part, then understand how the cornea works, then understand the signals in the optic cord, then look at the part of the brain that receives that, then you can make an artificial signal (as people now are doing) to replace human vision with artificial vision, do the same for other senses and you have full VR.

      • Lucidfeuer

        See, the problem is that all you said is false.

        Vision is 100x more complicated than that because light doesn’t rebound, enter the eye and is then converted and interpreted…that’s a scientifically materialistic and obsolete interpretation of sight that has been superseded by way more complicated quantum zeno effect ie. the light does the reverse path.

        And the thing is, the physical (optic or whatnot) part of neural link is not even the most complicated…

    • Michigan Jay Sunde

      He could be committing the sin Michael Abrash warned us about, assuming advanced technologies WILL exist just because they fit a timeline or a narrative. Somebody, somewhere has to actually solve the problems in the real world, and even Scrooge McDuck money cannot brute-force a technological revelation. Some things we cannot guess or anticipate.

  • Get Schwifty!

    Good to hear Luckey still has his core enthusiasm for VR. I think it was hilarious when people were acting like he was a done actor on the stage… I suspect he will be around and involved for a long time… and still in his 20’s with a war chest of $500 million he has plenty of time and pull.

    • kool

      I think he has a few screws loose, hopefully he doesn’t get all eccentric on us. I hope he does something else great, nobody should to have their ship jacked like that. Even if he did have it coming!

      • Gerald Terveen

        you are nuts – I totally want him to stay eccentric and not try to conform to standards! the worst that could happen is him going with conservative spending and investment strategies that lack vision …

        • kool

          I was thinking more of a Howard Hughes albatross shut in type. I hope brain implants isn’t his albatross. IDC what party he supports, but 500 mil in a couple years will test your mental fortitude.

  • Honestly I don’t agree with the fact that we won’t see anything in 2018… another year and a half without innovations?
    Some days ago Vive has announced a standalone headset that may include eye tracking; Vive is making new controllers, etc… I don’t think that Oculus will make only content…

    • Get Schwifty!

      Those items are not really “innovation” as in a first to market (with the possible exception of the eye tracking which is pretty much already available)… it’s just more of the same with existing technology in a package. The Vive controllers are not really “innovative”, you would have to give credit first to the Touch for that step. The Vive was however innovative with the tracking technology.

      • Michigan Jay Sunde

        I’m sorry, eye-tracking is not “pretty much already available” unless you count the $800 FOVE. If it would pretty-much-available, I would buy that shit. ;)

        • Gerald Terveen

          you have seen the new solution to retrofit it into the Vive that is supposed to hit the market these days? (weeks, not months)

          • Michigan Jay Sunde

            I see all. I have too much time on my hands. What I /don’t/ see, is that shit – on my desk. :) SMI was offering eye-tracking retrofits for the Vive last year, but you had to email them with the magic words to even get a price, and I didn’t know the magic words. It needs to be a standard feature in every mid-high range headset, zero exceptions.

        • Get Schwifty!

          From a technical perspective is what I mean… it’s not like years off, it’s in the early stages for consumer adoption by price but it IS here now ;) I’m thinking specifically of technologies like the Tobii eye tracking for instance.

    • Xron

      He clarified, that he meant 12 months, not whole 2018.
      So we can get our hopes up to see something 2018 summer or holiday season.

  • kool

    Dude is crazy if he thinks we’ll want implants in 5 years or ever.

    • Evil13RT

      Five years before oculus, I thought the VR idea was dead in the water.
      If someone figures out a game changing use for implants then I don’t doubt it will become a popular thing.

      • kool

        It might be doable, but I’m not getting implants for gaming. I’ll try a brain sensor, but physically invasive implants is where I get off. It’ll probably go over well with the tattoo and piercing crowd, lol.

    • visual

      The future holds many answers, not just one answer. It’s a logical fallacy that futurists only believe in one option. Some will want implants, some won’t. Technology gives us options, not limitations.

    • Gerald Terveen

      yeah – total nutter! recently heard about folks wanting to make implants to make hearts beat and give people the ability to hear. what kind of freak would go for such a thing with a clear benefit?

      • kool

        Yeah cuz health and hobby decisions hold the same weight.

        • Gerald Terveen

          who says it has to start with the hobby decisions? I’d say the path is way more likely to reach those with medical needs first …

          • kool

            I’m just saying I would get a life saving implant. I wouldn’t get one to play games tho. I’m not a big fan of surgery lol.

          • Gerald Terveen

            by the time these become a reality that surgery will likely be like a visit at the dentist :) … and not that I like to visit the dentist, but if it means I no longer have to carry a big AR headset all day …