Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey delivered the company's first pre-ordered virtual reality headset to a lucky customer. The first batch of the VR devices are shipping now but the first unit bought was hand-delivered by the company executive instead of delivery personnel from FedEx, DHL, or United States Postal Service. The big event was live-streamed by Oculus' parent company Facebook.
Ross Martin of Anchorage, Alaska was the first person to pre-order the VR device. Most shoppers will get their VR headsets on March 28, Monday but Oculus has already sold out of pre-orders through June.
Martin received a low-key email that said the company wanted to deliver the Rift headset to him. He was pleased to get the digital message but thought all customers who pre-ordered the device received the e-mail.
The VR fan was so excited about the Oculus Rift unit being delivered that he could not sleep the night before. He shared that he felt like the protagonist in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."
Luckey wanted to deliver the first Rift unit because it has been one of his goals over the years, according to Polygon. He explains he has been working on the VR device since 2009 so he would not let any "random delivery guy" hand the new product to the first customer.
The Oculus founder referred to the trip as a vacation, but after making a short video of the delivery process he had to rush to the airport to catch the airline flight back home.
Some industry experts project that Oculus will ship about half a million units during the next year, while others believe the figure could be closer to two million, according to VentureBeat.
Tech advisor Digi-Capital's advisers project the VR industry could be worth $30 billion by 2020. PlayStation VR and HTC Vive are scheduled to join Google Cardboard and Samsung's Gear VR models this year.
In related news a diagram emailed to buyers of the HTC Vive consumer edition shows 20 different items, which is about the same number in the dev kits.
The reason for the VR device's many parts is its room-scale VR setup. The pieces include lighthouse boxes, large tether that connects to a PC, and pair of custom controllers.