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John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

oculusvr.com

31–40 of 210 posts

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#31
post #9

This makes me want one. This is huge news for Oculus and I wish the team the best. I had a first glimpse of an Oculus watching someone use one on a Twitch stream the other day. He was just watching a tech demo thing of a rollercoaster ride but it was clear the tech was at or around that tipping point of interesting vs actually fun.

I have a Rift. I'd say it's there.

I haven't seen a truly "killer app" just yet, but if I wasn't totally sold on the concept when I backed the project, I certainly was the first time I strapped the Rift on.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#33

This news gives me the shivers. (I recently read "masters of doom" after a HN recommendation, so a couple of months ago I'd have been like "what? who?".)

I think I read it based off the same recommendation.

After reading that book I don't think there's any way you can come away without seeing him as one of the top 25 programmers in the world. Mad genius for sure.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#34

Also seems to be confirmed he's leaving id: http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/07/oculus-rift-john-carmack-...

From the link:

Update: Bethesda Softworks (parent company to id Software) responded with the following statement to today's news: "John has long been interested in the work at Oculus VR and wishes to spend time on that project. The technical leadership he provides for games in development at id Software is unaffected." We've followed up for clarification as to what that means for Carmack's efforts at id. In the note from Oculus, Carmack is said to be heading up and working out of newly created Dallas offices for Oculus.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#35

Also seems to be confirmed he's leaving id: http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/07/oculus-rift-john-carmack-...

They've updated it, now looks like he's supposedly still involved with Bethesda/Zenimax. Which at least to me seems weird, since last I knew he did at least a LOT of the work on any new engines himself. Hard to do that if he's busy with being CTO of another company working on the Rift.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#36
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's AR?

Augmented Reality. For a good example of current projects representing each field: Virtual Reality - Oculus Rift Augmented Reality - Google Glass AR sits on top of/alongside the real world, where VR tries to replace it.

I'm not sure I'd call Google Glass "AR".

It's just a small screen in your vision, it doesn't analyze or enhance your existing viewpoint in any way (unless I am mistaken).

Cast AR is a better example:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/18/cast-ar-hands-on-with-jer...

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#37

So, let me say this much: Fuck. Yes. Quake 3 had stereoscopic rendering in the source back before anybody really cared, and Carmack has had long involvement both in consumer 3D graphics as well as vendor relations. Long-short is that if you look at the code the dude has shipped, he really cares about things being both technically correct and worth hacking on. This is a really good move, and if they end up picking Mik…

> and if they end up picking Mike Abrash I'll be unsurprised.

Abrash is working at Valve on AR &VR, I'd say that's unlikely though not impossible.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#39
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From his blog, Abrash seems to be much more interested in AR than VR, and seems to lean toward VR being a parallel (but mutually supportive) path to AR, rather than a step along the way. Also, I think Newell might offer Abrash the entire company before he lets him slip away from Valve.

Didn't Valve recently ditch their AR-related work when they fired Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson? I thought they were shifting focus away from that for now..

FWIW their AR stuff was really weird. It looked stupid when I saw it at a convention. I would have dumped them too.

If they had been doing Oculus Rift type stuff I'm sure they'd still be at Valve.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#40
post #10

Wait, is he leaving id? Didn't see that clarified in the article.

He talked in his Quakecon keynote about being too uninvolved in Armadillo because he was working at id/Bethesda. Splitting his time three ways would only seem to exacerbate the problem. It's been four years since id was purchased. Maybe he's just moving on.

Armadillo is in "hibernation mode", nothing is really going on there at the moment.
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