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John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

oculusvr.com

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Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#71

Post by tveita »

deletes wrote: post #41
tanepiper wrote: post #19

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

Don't make assumptions. He could still work at Id as a consultant or continue as a technical director with a diminished role. EDIT: He still works at Id http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/16593/article/john-carmac...

Good to hear. I hope they will finish id Tech 6 some day. I've been sold on sparse voxel octrees since I first heard about them, and I think the super-scalable level of detail would be great for VR as well.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#72

Post by nknighthb »

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.

Carmack is a workaholic of legendary productivity. If there are truly 10x programmers out there, he is undoubtedly one.

Another important point is that it's not games he develops, it's game engines. Other people do most of the game logic and design. Working on a 3d display for those engines doesn't seem so far removed from that, and of potential value to future id/ZeniMax work.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#73

Post by thenomad »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #62

I've played with an Oculus VR, and I think they're amazing. But I'm not convinced that they're ready for the mass market yet. Not because of any failing on their part, but because I think that they need games, and controllers, specifically designed to work with VR. You can't use mouse/keyboard well if you can't see the mouse/keyboard. UIs that float at the bottom of the screen feel very odd when you move your head ar…

Try Minecraft with the mouse and keyboard, and the HUD off.

It's a spectacularly immersive experience with the Rift - the first "holy shit, I totally lost track of time there" experience I've had with the technology.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#74

Post by rcarmo »

nickstinemates wrote: post #50
rcarmo wrote: post #29

Carmack has been edging towards this for a while now (not Oculus, but the concept), and I foresee great things. OTOH, considering I played all of id's games up to Doom 3 (which I found a tad too creepy), I hope they strike a good balance between display smoothness and sheer unmitigated fun. I miss a good Q3A CTF.

Can you imagine Q3 CTF but in VR? That thought alone makes me fear for my future productivity.

Nothing beats that moment when, late in the evening, you hear someone shout "GET THE FLAG!!!" across an open plan office.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#75

Post by peterhajas »

angersock wrote: post #54
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…

Actually, someone modified the Rift to run exclusively off of USB with little effort. Google around for it.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#76

Post by Wintamute »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #62

I've played with an Oculus VR, and I think they're amazing. But I'm not convinced that they're ready for the mass market yet. Not because of any failing on their part, but because I think that they need games, and controllers, specifically designed to work with VR. You can't use mouse/keyboard well if you can't see the mouse/keyboard. UIs that float at the bottom of the screen feel very odd when you move your head ar…

What makes you think Oculus are convinced they're ready for the mass market? They haven't even mentioned a vague release date and are still openly iterating and researching hardware and software ...

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#77

Post by ssewell »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #62

I've played with an Oculus VR, and I think they're amazing. But I'm not convinced that they're ready for the mass market yet. Not because of any failing on their part, but because I think that they need games, and controllers, specifically designed to work with VR. You can't use mouse/keyboard well if you can't see the mouse/keyboard. UIs that float at the bottom of the screen feel very odd when you move your head ar…

The Razer Hydra is a great game controller for the Oculus Rift. An outstanding example of its usage can be seen in "The Gallery: Six Elements", which is currently under development and will take full advantage of the Rift used in conjunction with Hydra: https://www.thegallerygame.com/

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#78

Post by JamesArgo »

ripter wrote: post #67
mistercow wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Glass could be called a kind of "proto-AR". It could certainly be a first (significant) step toward real AR.

Right now your phone is as much AR as the google glass. Now if Google starts letting us use the camera for face recognition we could see some proto AR stuff.

As someone with terrible face recognition ability, I was really disappointed Google disallowed the feature. Such a device could vastly improve my life. I hope there's some open alternative to Google glass soon.

Re: John Carmack joins Oculus as CTO

#79

Post by lightbritefight »

untog wrote: post #61
mistercow wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Glass could be called a kind of "proto-AR". It could certainly be a first (significant) step toward real AR.

Not really. In terms of AR, Google Glass is doing absolutely nothing new, so it wouldn't be the first.

Nothing new by default, but its opening up a lot of hardware potential. Its not just a screen and camera that's at eye level, its also setting new social norms that make that acceptable. Even now, Glass isn't far from Bluetooth levels of socially okay, which is say annoying to most but acceptable. Once it reaches that point, I expect AR to be a focal point of development. It only makes sense.

A simple street view overlay + wikipedia filter would be basic AR, and that doesn't seem difficult at all. Google could monetize with virtual window ads that businesses would buy for glass+streetview users.

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