Luckey Absent During Oculus Conference, Zuckerberg Wants VR Chat With Mars Settlers

Facebook is currently holding the Oculus Connect 3 conference today, where Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage to present his grand design involving VR. Conspicuously absent from the event is Oculus Rift inventor, Palmer Luckey, who recently got involved in a political scandal over his perceived support for Donald Trump.

The first of the two-day Oculus event will see a revolving door of speakers that will be presenting VR technology in terms of its potential to attendees as well as Facebook’s plans for the future. Zuckerberg is pretty much the main event during the conference, where he strapped on an Oculus Rift headset and began going through his vision for tomorrow, Fortune reports.

One of Zuckerberg’s main goals involving VR is integrating the technology into the next generation of communications. He showed off what this will look like by calling his wife at home via the headset and interacting with her using a virtual avatar that looks like Justin Timberlake.

Zuckerberg wants to get to a point where users can call each other and chat with each other on a regular basis using VR technology during his talks. Eventually, he envisions a future where users could also do things like play virtual chess or call settlers on Mars using the Rift.

Speaking of the Rift, the absence of Luckey during the event is impossible to miss, Tech Crunch notes. Not only is he the inventor of the headset, he also made several appearances during past conferences to share his ideas about VR.

The connection between the recent scandal where Luckey supported a troll website campaigning for Trump and his lack of appearance during the Oculus conference is undeniable. Many are speculating that the company decided his presence would divert attention from the key aspects of the event, thus making him an unwanted distraction.