Voices of VR Podcast

This is the first of 44 interviews that I conducted at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference & Expo. I was able to capture over 11.5 hours worth of material from 3/4 of the speakers, 2/3 of the exhibitors and 11% of all attendees, and I’ll be doing a daily podcast over the next month and a half (and maybe beyond). A full list of interviewees is listed down below.

Palmer Luckey is the founder of Oculus VR, and I had an opportunity to conduct a brief interview with him. I noticed that Palmer’s bio mentions that he founded the ModRetro Forums, and it turns out that there’s some interesting connections between ModRetro and the founding of Oculus VR.

He talks about some of his first and forgettable VR experiences, and the process of starting what he claims is the world’s largest private VR HMD collection. He also covers his connection to the /r/oculus reddit community, the reaction to the Facebook acquisition announcement on Reddit, as well as what he sees as what the future of VR.

Reddit Discussion here. And be sure to check out the Rev VR Ubercast featuring an in-depth discussion with Palmer here.

Topics

• 0:00 – What led to founding the ModRetro forums & how has the console modding scene evolved?
• 2:29 – How did VR evolve out of being involved with the console modding scene?
• 3:38 – What do you remember about your first VR experience?
• 4:20 – When did you start your VR HMD collection and what were some of the first VR headsets that you got?
• 4:56 – Did you end up fixing a lot of these VR HMDs?
• 5:17 – What have been some of your favorite VR experiences?
• 5:47 – How often do you read the Oculus subreddit community?
• 6:25 – How did you react to the Reddit community’s downvoting and skepticism of the Facebook acquisition?
• 7:14 – What were some of your takeaways from the panel about the next five years of VR?
• 8:11 – What has been your experience of this first consumer VR conference & what it means?

Full list of interviews from the 1st Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference

1. Aaron Davies, Head of Developer Relations at Oculus VR
2. Aaron Lemke, Unello Design founder & Eden River game
3. Amir Rubin, Sixense Entertainment CEO
4. Ben Lang, Road to VR founder & executive editor
5. Bernhard Drax, Draxtor.com Second Life documentarian
6. Blair Renaud, IRIS VR Co-Founder & Lead Designer of Technolust
7. Caitlyn Meeks, Unity Asset Store Manager
8. Cosmo Scharf, Founder of VRLA
9. Cris Miranda, EnterVR podcast
10. “Cymatic” Bruce Wooden, VR evangelist
11. David Holz, Leap Motion CTO and Co-founder
12. Denny Unger, Cloudhead Games President & Creative Director of “The Gallery: Six Elements” game
13. Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab CEO (Second Life)
14. Edward Mason, GameFace Labs Founder and CEO
15. Eric Greenbaum, Jema VR Founder
16. George Burger, Infinadeck founder
17. James Blaha, Diplopia game for lazy eye
18. Jan Goetgeluk, Virtuix CEO & developer of the Virtuix Omni
19. Jesse Joudrey, Jespionage Entertainment founder & creator of VRChat
20. John Murray, Seebright founder & CEO
21. Josh Farkas, Cubicle Ninjas CEO
22. Matt Bell, Matterport founder & CEO
23. Matt “Stompz” Carrell, Stompz founder & co-host of PodVR podcast
24. Max Geiger, producer at Wemo Lab
25. Mike Sutherland, PrioVR & VP of technology at YEI Technology
26. Nathan Burba, Survios CEO
27. Nick Lebesis, Network Flo
28. Nonny de la Peña, Immersive Journalism founder & Annenberg Fellow at USC School of Cinematic Arts
29. OlivierJT, Synthesis Universe creator
30. Palmer Luckey, Oculus VR Founder
31. Paul Mylyniec, MakeVR Head of Development at Sixense Entertainment
32. Peter Sassaman, Gauntl33t Project Haptic Feedback Glove
33. Philip Rosedale, Founder of High Fidelity & Second Life
34. Reverend Kyle Riesenbeck, Rev VR Podcast & Road to VR contributor
35. Scott Phillips, VR Walker Project
36. Sean Edwards, Director of Development Lucid VR & Shovsoft & Lunar Flight & ZVR
37. Simon Solotko, All Future Parties Founder
38. Stefan Pernar, Virtual Reality Ventures founder & Virtual Reality Fashion project
39. Stefano Corazza, Mixamo CEO & Co-founder
40. Tony Davidson, Innervision VR & Ethereon game
41. Tony Parisi, Vizi Founder, & co-creator of the VRML & co-chair of the San Francisco WebGL Meetup
42. Vladimir Vukicevic, Gaming director at Mozilla & inventor of WebGL
43. Walter Greenleaf, Stanford University, MediaX Program & medical applications of VR
44. William Provancher, Tactical Haptics founder & Reactive Grip™ touch feedback

Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio