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John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

oculusvr.com

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Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#51

Post by wsc981 »

sbarre wrote: post #20
WhitneyLand wrote: post #11

What's your guess on how much equity they had to give him? I would have been inclined to be generous.

I don't think John Carmack is doing what he does for the money at this stage.. That said, he did say during his Quakecon keynote that he needs more "crazy money" to put into Armadillo Aerospace, so perhaps this is his play for that funding..

I don't think it is. From what I understand, John Carmack has decided to put all developments with Armadillo Aerospace on hold, until he can get more investors (besides himself) to support this company.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#52

Post by nrp »

socialist_coder wrote: post #39
sbarre wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was actually pretty impressed by CastAR. It's certainly the most compelling AR-esque experience I've tried.

It opens up a different set of game possibilities than a VR headset like the Rift. Think augmented multiplayer tabletop games rather than immersive worlds.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#53

Post by flogic »

runevault wrote: post #35
tanepiper wrote: post #19

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.

It's worth remembering that John also did Armadillo Aerospace on the side too.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#54

Post by angersock »

eterm wrote: 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.

We've had one at our house for a few days now--even the relatively rough devkit delivers on the promise, in spades. The only thing it needs to is to be completely USB powered (probably not possible given the power envelope, or at least have a way of powering it from a battery pack for portability reasons).

People using it (we had a party recently, showed it off) do feel disorientation, mostly due to a lack of seeing where there real body is. Our hope is to integrate the point cloud from a kinect to help with that.

Oh, also, after a few drinks the impedance mismatch between what you're seeing and what you're doing is imperceptible. :)

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#56

Post by angersock »

adambratt wrote: post #33
tehwalrus wrote: post #23

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.

Not so much genius as just an absurdly hardcore work-ethic, and a refusal to ship code that is sloppy where it would matter.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#59

Post by jayrobin »

tehwalrus wrote: post #23

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?".)

Masters of Doom is an absolutely brilliant book that rekindled my interest in game development. I'd heard of Carmack before reading it, but this news is so much more impactful knowing just how integral he was to making gaming what it is today.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#60

Post by mjhagen »

tanepiper wrote: post #19

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

“My time division is now Oculus over Id over Armadillo. Busy busy busy!” ~ @ID_AA_Carmack https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/365126783290445824
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