Oculus wouldn't have had that buzz without Carmack pushing the original Rift DIY kit before their Kickstarter. He was already commenting on Palmers DIY creation

Oculus wouldn't have had that buzz without Carmack pushing the original Rift DIY kit before their Kickstarter. He was already commenting on Palmers DIY creations in the community where the ideas for Rift were born. It was more or less a community project, because without community input in those forum threads Palmer woulnd't even had considered glasses, he was deciding between VR glasses and a 3D monitor in his first posts there, and got nudged by a member towards glasses, lol. He just never stopped absorbing information and kept iterating on his franken HMDs and prototypes, and one day when he had already reached a good level Carmack showed up.