I don't think it's the author's job to tell the reader he can't understand what Carmack's saying.
John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset
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Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset
#12There's something very pleasing to know that guys like Carmack aren't just punching out tomorrow's FPS engines, but doing out of the box stuff like this. I wonder if we're entering some kind of tech golden age. The post-PC stuff, SpaceX/Tesla, Kindle/Nook, Win8, Smartphones, etc things have gotten weird quickly.
I'm still waiting to wake up one day and see a $999 home robot that can do everything from clean the bathroom to walk the dog. If this happened tomorrow I wouldn't be that surprised.
Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset
#13Wow, Carmack looks like a passionate, geeky 16 year old. It's very endearing for such a legend.
Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset
#14No, John Carmack is developing software for the Oculus RIFT being developed by Palmer Luckey. http://oculusvr.com/?page_id=2 It is a pretty amazing piece of hardware though. Over 90 degree field of view for $500, rather than the $10000+ it still costs from anywhere else.
"It’s worth noting that the prototype Carmack is demoing wasn’t made by him, but by another Texan builder of VR headsets. It’s using the same tech and principles as Carmack’s own version, which was unfortunately unable to make the trip to E3." It sounds like he is making his own headset as well. The demo was not on his, though.
That was my impression. It sounds like he is really just looking at all options to figure out what does and does not work and why. To that extent, he is building and modifying hardware to experiment while also working with manufacturers.
Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset
#15Oh man, the memories. I remember playing the original Doom game with a virtual reality helmet at a gaming convention back in 1994 or so when I was a little kid. It was a tiny convention at a small Finnish town, but I remember seeing same kind of helmets in photographs from CeBITs and E3's in computer magazines.
Does anyone remember a consumer VR helmet circa 1993? It had a helmet with displays of roughly "mode 13h" resolution and a hand held hockey puck with a few buttons? The helmet and the puck had accelerometers and/or inclinometers and/or gyroscopes or something to detect movement.
Head turning affected in-game camera turn and tilting the puck was movement. Puck buttons were fire, change weapon, etc. Proper FPS aiming would have been difficult but Doom's projectile collision detection is 2d anyway :)
Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset
#16VALVe is also working on something similar: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-here-w...
Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset
#17For those of you who follow his Twitter account, this is nothing new, but still cool that its getting some official coverage. :)
Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset
#18Here's to hoping someone with a name in the industry can finally push through decent consumer VR, and that this will get some attention at E3...
I bought the Sony HMZ-T1 earlier this month hoping that it would be what I was always looking for in terms of home VR (despite the lack of headtracking, which I was going to add with trackIR). However, it was horribly uncomfortable to wear and just didn't give the immersive feel I was looking for.
In looking at the Oculus site it mentions that there is a Kickstarter campaign, but then when I click through to a forum post on it the date he mentioned that was back in 2009. I'd be first to contribute to a decent HMD Kickstarter campaign...
Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset
#19There's something very pleasing to know that guys like Carmack aren't just punching out tomorrow's FPS engines, but doing out of the box stuff like this. I wonder if we're entering some kind of tech golden age. The post-PC stuff, SpaceX/Tesla, Kindle/Nook, Win8, Smartphones, etc things have gotten weird quickly. I'm still waiting to wake up one day and see a $999 home robot that can do everything from clean the bathr…
Sounds like you may not be familiar with Armadillo Aerospace yet...
Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset
#20If you follow Carmack's twitter feed, you'll see him mentioning his frustration over the last year at some of the display tech under the hood as he was exploring the space.