‘he Oculus Rift.

‘he Oculus Rift.

Its dark and creepy in the cargo hold of the sevastool. As I walk between the piles of crates,a noise makes my heart to skip a beat. I tell myself it was just dripping water.

I shouldn’t be scared,since I know this is just a videogame-a demo of alien: isolation based on the Alien movie franchise. But am wearing a virtual reality headset called the Oculars Rift,and the game fills my entire field of vision .when I turn my head to look around,the world moves with me.it all feels damn real,as if I’m walking on the actual space station,being stalked by one of the creatures that stalked sigourney water. Damn real,damn scary.

There is another sound,and I turn to see a heavy blast door slide open. The bipedal alien rises,closes the gap between us and graps me,its inner jaws plunging toward my face. Frozen ,I emit an involuntary squeal of panic. From behind me this time,in the real world I hear a laugh. Palmer Luckey,the engagingly goof creator of the rift,has been furtively watching the play.” you didn’t last very long,”he chortles.

Luckey has been preparing for a game like thus since he was a kid-which wasn’t that long ago. He started making virtual reality headsets when he was 16.At 19 he founded his company,Oculus VR. At 21 he sold it to face-book for $2billion,despite the fact that it had practically no revenue,or even a commercial product-it was little more than a prototype. And now ,just 22,Palmer Luckey is on the verge of doing what generations before him tried and failed -bringing virtual reality to the masses.

If you are a skeptical,you probably haven’t tried the rift,an experience that tends to create devotees-and inspire visions of how VR will change the world in ways far beyond games. After buying the company- in many ways face- book’s most audacious acquaintance,compared with the growing user base of instagram,and the proven revenue model of Whatsapp-Mark Zuckerberg described it as a new communication platform on the scale of telephony or television.

One day,we believe this kind of immersive,augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people. By feeling truly present,you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life.