Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey confirmed an odd-looking email posted on Reddit is not a scam but a legitimate message from Oculus Research seeking subjects for a 6-hour research study taking place in a person’s home.
Here’s the text of the email:
Hi PERSON,
We hope you might be interested in participating in an upcoming Oculus research study!
We are looking for people 21 years or older to participate in a 6-hour research study on February 9, 10, 11th, or 15th.The study will take place in your home and will be conducted by 2 researchers from the Oculus Research team.To thank you for your time, you’ll receive a $400 Visa gift card if you are selected to participate.
If you are interested in participating, please complete this brief 3 minute survey as soon as possible!
Oculus Research is the long-term innovation arm of Facebook’s VR efforts which is looking at all aspects of human sensation and perception. It is run by Chief Scientist Michael Abrash and based in Seattle but the division recently opened an office in Pittsburgh. At Oculus Connect 2 last year Abrash outlined the current state of head-mounted display design compared with the desired goals. To achieve those benchmarks there need to be enormous technological breakthroughs across a number of fields.
Of course, the head-mounted display itself isn’t the only necessary improvement to drive all the human senses and Oculus Research is investigating a number of fields to improve VR. A slide from the Abrash presentation outlined the breadth of the research, any of which could be related to what they are testing inside people’s homes over the course of this 6-hour research study.
We hope those who end up participating in the research study are able to share what the testing involved or that Oculus Research ends up sharing its data with the community. We’ll be sure to update readers if we see any verified reports.
