Oculus founder Palmer Luckey was of course tinkering and prototyping ideas for VR HMDs long before the 2012 Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift DK1 propelled VR back into the spotlight. One of the Oculus Rift DK1’s closest descendent prototype, the PR4, was loaned by Luckey to a fellow MTBS3D forum member known as cyberreality, now Oculus Community Manager Andres Hernandez. This is his PR4 unboxing video.
Before the Oculus Rift appeared at E3 in 2012, under the guise of one John Carmack’s ‘magic hat’, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey had shared his thoughts and designs for a new, low cost, high-performance virtual reality headset on the forums at MTBS3D.com, the most popular destination at that time for tinkerers and enthusiasts in the stereoscopic 3D and virtual reality space to come together and share ideas.
Luckey, whose ambitions at that time extended only as far as sharing his prototype work with the community, offered up his early work to community members who offered to support the project by sending Luckey money for the parts (totalling some $500 at that time) in exchange for access to early prototypes.
This unboxing video (top), shot back in December 2011, a few months before the first public signs of the early Oculus Rift in the mainstream media, was uploaded recently to Hernandez’s Youtube channel, perhaps in recognition of Oculus’ first wave of shipments either due to arrive or be sent, depending on how you read social media chatter.
Another video already uploaded by Hernandez seems to follow chronologically, and shows the PR4 in action, including a close-up peer through the lenses of the unit.