Palmer Luckey Awarded Smithsonian Youth Achievement Award
Oculus VR Inc. founder Palmer Luckey was among a group of 10 innovators in art, science, and culture honored on Thursday night during the third annual American Ingenuity Awards event at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.
The Smithsonian Magazine hosted the event and presented Luckey with the Youth Achievement Award for his innovation, and groundbreaking contributions to the virtual reality industry.
Luckey was 16 years-old when he began creating a working prototype of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset from his parents garage. Since then, Luckey, now age 22, has seen his vision of the Oculus Rift and the future of VR becoming a reality thanks to the support of 1,000s of developers and early adopters that believe the time has come to push the industry forward, including the purchase of Oculus VR by Facebook for $2 billion earlier this year.
According to an interview with the Washington Post, “Virtual reality will be a massive part of the future of entertainment and education and communication,” Luckey says.
While no official announcement on the release date of the highly-anticipated consumer version of the Oculus Rift has been revealed yet, it is expected to launch sometime next year.