We recently profiled 19 20-somethings who became stars. Here’s one more person for that list.

Steven Tweedie reports at Seattle PI.

How A 20-Year-Old College Dropout Raised $18 Million To Build The Perfect Virtual Reality Headset

Forget about the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, the real game-changer in video games is a new virtual reality headset called the Oculus Rift.

The Rift is a virtual reality headset unlike any other, sucking you into PC games with an enormous field of view and stunning stereoscopic 3D that doesn’t feel forced like in movie theaters.

We tried an early version the Rift out and were blown away, but with only a low-resolution developer kit available, legions of avid fans have been dying for details on the long-awaited HD consumer version, slated to arrive sometime in 2014.

So we set up an interview with the inventor of the Oculus Rift, 20-year-old Palmer Luckey, to talk more about how he turned a device he invented in his garage into a startup worth over $18 million, Oculus VR.

Business Insider: I know you worked as an engineer at the University of Southern California, but how did you first become interested in the hacker/maker scene?

Palmer Luckey:  So I had been in the hacker/maker scene for quite a few years before I worked there. I mean, most of my life. I was interested in virtual reality for several years even before working at USC, it wasn’t an interest that started there at all. In fact, when I started working at USC, I already had prototypes of the Rift that were very similar to the final design.

BI:  You have said before that you have the largest private collection of virtual reality headsets, so were these “Frankenstein” Rifts? Did you combine parts from other head mounted displays, or did you buy parts separately?

Luckey: A combination. I built a lot of different prototypes. Some of them were modified head-mounted displays from other people. Some of them were built from standard off-the-shelf components with some custom bits.