Billionaire Palmer Luckey takes a victory lap with return to headset world 8 years after getting fired from Facebook
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- Palmer Luckey's Anduril is bringing its tech to the US Army's Integrated Visual Augmentation System.
- Luckey said the tech will improve soldiers' safety and lethality.
- Luckey, who was ousted from Facebook, added that he is among the smartest people in the VR industry.
The super-soldiers depicted in sci-fi movies are becoming closer to reality.
Palmer Luckey, the billionaire founder of Oculus VR and Anduril Industries, is bringing his virtual reality software to the military world after inking a new deal announced on Thursday.
The resulting product will combine a software called Lattice from Anduril, Luckey's security and defense company, with the US Army's Integrated Visual Augmentation System headset, which relies on Microsoft's headset technology.
"The idea is to enhance soldiers," Luckey told Wired. "Their visual perception, audible perception — basically to give them all the vision that Superman has, and then some, and make them more lethal."
If it reminds you of scenes like those from Marvel's "Iron Man," you're not far off base. Luckey called it a "classic sci-fi concept" in his interview with Wired.
In a press release Anduril released on Thursday, the company said it had "successfully integrated Lattice into Microsoft's IVAS hardware and software platform, enabling Soldiers to see real time threats across the battlespace." Robin Seiler, the corporate vice president of Mixed Reality at Microsoft, said in the statement the collaboration between the two companies will enable safer military operations and "allow us to further expand the impact IVAS will have" on US soldiers.
It's a sort of victory lap for the billionaire, who was ousted from Facebook in 2016 after the company acquired Luckey's Oculus two years prior.
The firing came amid backlash surrounding Luckey's political donations to a pro-Donald Trump group. Meta and Zuckerberg have previously said his politics were not a factor in his departure.
Earlier this month, the US Army announced it had inked a contract with Anduril for Ghost X, the company's Uncrewed Aircraft System.
"I am one of the smartest people in the VR industry, I think," he told Wired. "And if that sounds arrogant, remember that it takes arrogance to start a company like Anduril."
The US Army, Anduril, and Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.