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John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset

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31–40 of 69 posts

Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset

#31

There'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…

Entering? This is it.

Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset

#32

There'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…

Entering? This is it.

No, this isn't it. We're entering an age of higher order technology, where each advancement leads to faster advancement.

In short, we are approaching what many have called the singularity.

Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset

#33
So, imagine you've got acceptable VR HMDs? What software would you write for them? Why not start today?

I want an IDE that's like the Bubbles from _Signal to Noise_

I want seamless telepresence for driving mechs

I'm learning faster now because I can have multiple physics and math books along with note-taking software on my iPad. What do good HMDs do for education?

...

Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset

#34

There'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…

I had that weird/awesome realization moment yesterday after seeing all these x86 tablets and arm laptops all running Win8 / Win8RT. Lines are getting quite blurry, its a great time to be a tech consumer.

Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset

#36
post #15

Oh 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" r…

I remember using Doom with multiple monitors. You could use command line switches to set a monitor to be the left view, and another monitor to be the right view, with your central monitor being the regular view. I only used that set up a few times (not having the network or monitors to do it otherwise) and it was pretty cool.

Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset

#37

There'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…

Entering? This is it.

Ain't seen nothing yet.

Just wait until:

We have fully reusable rocket ships that let us put people in orbit at less than $200k per person (SpaceX reusable Falcon 9 / Dragon, likely to see fruition within the next 5 to 15 years or so).

We have hand held computers and smartphones with the cpu power of an entire server rack today and with petabytes of non-volatile storage that's nearly as fast as ram (memristors, possibly RSFQ logic, possible on a circa 20 year timeline).

We have fully automated factories (the grand-children of today's CNC machines and 3D printers), you upload some data and press a few buttons and not too long after a fully assembled complex product (a tablet computer, an automobile, an excavator, a spaceship) comes out the other end, as many as you want. And then you start self-replicating such factories this way. That's probably going to happen within the next 50 years, if not sooner.

And this is hardly everything. The future is a crazy place.

Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset

#38
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entering? This is it.

No, this isn't it. We're entering an age of higher order technology, where each advancement leads to faster advancement. In short, we are approaching what many have called the singularity.

The singularity specifically requires AIs that can build smarter AIs. I'm not sure any of our current progress is really leading to true AI.

Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset

#39
post #38
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this isn't it. We're entering an age of higher order technology, where each advancement leads to faster advancement. In short, we are approaching what many have called the singularity.

The singularity specifically requires AIs that can build smarter AIs. I'm not sure any of our current progress is really leading to true AI.

Agreed. However, I don't think we really want AI. We want IA (Intelligence Augmentation). AI leads to slavery or at best pet-ness. IA leads to godhood (maybe?)

Re: John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset

#40
post #2

No, 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.

sensics p-sight was the best available last time I cared to look, in the $100,000+ range =/

http://sensics.com/products/head-mounted-displays/pisight-ul...

the trouble with stereoscopic curved displays seems to be keeping them calibrated to your eyes properly, slight shifts of the head clamp messes things up pretty badly

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