An Anchorage man made national technology news this weekend when he became the first consumer to get his hands on the Oculus Rift, a hotly anticipated virtual-reality headset that was hand-delivered to him by the man who brought it to fruition.
Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey met Saturday with the Anchorage buyer, Ross Martin. Martin, described by Oculus officials as "a software developer and avid gamer," was the first person to place a preorder for an Oculus Rift headset. The $599 device is scheduled to ship to other customers Monday.
Martin, 33, said by phone Sunday that although other projects developing VR headsets have emerged, Luckey's long-term commitment to the project made him decide to buy a Rift.
"Palmer and everyone who started developing the Rift were really the first," Martin said. "The people who are making the Rift are in it for the long haul, and that's their core competency and their focus."
When preorders for the headset opened in January, Martin said he placed one -- but he wasn't told at the time that he was the first person to have done so.
"It was just like the launch of a new iPhone: Everyone just jumps online and tries to get their orders in," Martin said.
Word that Martin's Rift might show up early first reached him the day before the delivery.
"I got a phone call on Friday that they were going to deliver it in person," Martin said. "I did not know that (Luckey) was coming to deliver it in person until I saw a tweet late Friday night that his plane was delayed; then I figured it out."
In a video of the meeting posted on Luckey's Facebook page, Martin takes a moment to describe his roots in Alaska.
"I'm a native Alaskan and I grew up in Wasilla with 23 sled dogs in my front yard," Martin said in the video. "My dad ran the Iditarod just before I was born, and my dad and mom met up in Kotzebue way up in Alaska, and my mom made ... dog sleds by hand."
Luckey, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, claimed surprise at discovering that "all these buildings are better than igloos" and "it is not dark all day right now."
"Basically the only things I really know about Alaska come from that old Disney movie, 'Snow Dogs,'" Luckey said. "So I come up here, and you basically tell me it is just like that: 'I am one of those 'Snow Dogs' people.'"
With Anchorage and the rest of Southcentral Alaska experiencing a wave of relatively warm weather, gaming website Kotaku noted the city's high of 41 degrees Saturday in mocking Luckey's claim that Alaska is "really cold" during the video.
Martin said Luckey visited him for about an hour, with the Facebook video capturing the unscripted nature of the encounter.
"Meeting someone with live camera rolling, it was kind of awkward," Martin said. "It really was the first time we'd ever met."
Oculus spokeswoman Andrea Schubert said in a statement Saturday that Luckey appreciated the opportunity to leave the Lower 48 when he hand-delivered the first Rift.
"(Luckey) and the team have been on a long journey to bring the Rift to consumers, and we had no idea it would also take us to Alaska too," Schubert wrote. "But it goes to show that being in the virtual reality business has no limits. We are excited to get Rift in the hands of people everywhere in the coming months."
Going forward, Martin said he was hoping to see the uses of VR expand in the online sector.
"At this stage I'm more of a consumer than a content creator, but in the long term I'm more interested in seeing what kind of interaction systems can be made for the Web," Martin said.
Despite the current focus of VR on gaming uses, Martin said the implications for day-to-day business computing -- where users typically have up to three monitors on a desk -- are also largely unexplored.
"In a virtual space, you can have as many monitors as you like," Martin said. "Your office can be in a lake or on the moon, so that excites me."
Although Luckey and Martin both posed with the Rift in the Facebook video footage, Martin said he hasn't yet been able to use the headset.
"We can't activate it until the software comes out on Monday, so I'll be surprised along with everyone else," Martin said.
The Oculus Rift began life as a Kickstarter project in 2012, until Facebook purchased Oculus VR for $2 billion. Intended to display games running on PCs as a high-end virtual-reality experience, the Rift comes with two titles: adventure story Lucky's Tale and space-combat simulator EVE: Valkyrie.