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John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

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Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#221

Post by WD-42 »

markus_zhang wrote: post #211
WD-42 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sarcastic at all. I'm in the same boat. I've been trying to get into contributing to Redox, but at the end of the work day when the kid is finally asleep it's hard to motivate.

I get it man. It’s really tough. How old is your kid? Mine is a 5 years old boy and he doesn’t seem to need a lot of sleep but a huge amount of companionship which really bugs me out. In theory, it’s better to sleep early, get up around 5 and get 2 hours of quality time, but man he sometimes gets up around 6:15 and earlier, and I found it difficult to get good sleep anyway, so I tried to switch to 2 hours of night ti…

I actually have some ideas about this kind of situation, drop me a line, email in my profile!

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#222

Post by spydum »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #190
dagmx wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John can be quite blunt and harsh in person, from everyone I know who’s interacted with him. If he doesn’t believe in something, he can sometimes be over critical and it’s hard to push back in that kind of power imbalance.

Carmack is a legend and I admire his work, but he seems to believe his own legend these days (like a few others big-ego gamedevs) and that can lead to arbitrary preferences being sold as gospel.

I'm sure that's true but I've worked with a lot of engineers that are of this caliber and as long as you can form a coherent logical explanation they will bend they're way more open than you expect. But you got to put in the work to make that argument. They won't take it on faith

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#223

Post by mrpippy »

GeekyBear wrote: post #22

My objection is that there is no universe in which Meta can be trusted with direct access to your raw gaze tracking data. The only thing I can imagine that would be more invasive would require a brain implant.

My understanding is that this is a key tenant of visionOS’s design, where apps don’t get access to gaze data (I think unless they’re taking over the full screen?)

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#224

Post by tom_ »

amarant wrote: post #97
Inityx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll offer a different interpretation: If a professional can't give critical feedback in a professional setting without being rude or belittling others, then they need to improve their communication skills.

This is not that though. This is just developers being unable to handle constructive criticism, and when they can't win the argument on merits, went for the HR option. It happens. I've had it happen to me too, but my response was to resign on the spot (I was already not satisfied with the company). The "toxic behaviour" I had done? I reverted a commit on the master branch that didn't compile, and sent a slack to the…

Carmack says he can't post the actual discussion, but clearly you have access to it - can you post it?

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#225

Post by doctorpangloss »

geodel wrote: post #102
doctorpangloss wrote: post #14

The problem with this guy is that it’s hard to criticize him, whether at work or in this forum. For example, I am going to be downvoted for mocking the fact that this guy thinks it’s some genius move to say “No” to making an operating system, whatever making an operating system means.

You can prove him wrong by doing thing what he claims should not be done.

See? This is why the Doom man got paid the big bucks. The Doom man has a literacy distortion field.

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#226

Post by spydum »

firesteelrain wrote: post #188
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... That's not an HR violation. If something a team is working on is a waste of resources, it's a waste. You can either realize that and pivot to something more useful (like an effort to take the improvements of the current OS project and apply them to existing OSes), or stubbornly insist on your value. Why is complaining to HR even an option on the table?

One could argue that if it’s not in your swim lane, you just let it fail. And if you aren’t that person’s manager, you tell them the code or design that you are reviewing and thus the gatekeeper is not adequate. Politely. You said your part and no need to get yourself in trouble. Document and move on. If the company won’t listen then you move on. No need to turn it into a HR issue.

Fully agree with this point we all know as engineers this shit is nails on the chalkboard.

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#227

Post by influx »

jamra wrote: post #202
Aurornis wrote: post #133

> They also got me reported to HR by the manager of the XROS effort for supposedly making his team members feel bad I've only seen John Carmack's public interactions, but they've all been professional and kind. It's depressing to imagine HR getting involved because someone's feelings had been hurt by an objective discussion from a person like John Carmack. I'm having flashbacks to the times in my career when coworker…

I followed his posts internally before he left. He was strict about resource waste. Hand tracking would break constantly and he brought metrics to his posts. His whole point was that Apple has hardware nailed down and it’ll be efficient software that will be the differentiator. The bloat at Meta was the result of empire building.

I followed his posts internally too. It's amazing how many people were arguing against fucking John Carmack. What a waste of talent.

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#228

Post by sbarre »

cma wrote: post #163
sesm wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This entire situation looks very suspicious. Was Carmack even responsible for triaging research projects and allocating resources for them? If yes, then he should have fought that battle earlier. If no, then the best he could do is to refuse to use that OS in projects he controls.

It should be fine to give your opinion on efforts.

Yeah it sounds to me here like the urge to reach for HR had less to do with Carmack and more to do with the overall culture at Meta.

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#229

Post by leoc »

WD-42 wrote: post #193
dagmx wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John can be quite blunt and harsh in person, from everyone I know who’s interacted with him. If he doesn’t believe in something, he can sometimes be over critical and it’s hard to push back in that kind of power imbalance.

Which makes sense when you are one of 3 developers at ID software. There's absolutely no room for waste. This is Meta. Let the kids build their operating system ffs. Is he now more concerned with protecting shareholder value? Who cares.

Meta's AR/VR division has burned a huge amount of money and years of time, with relatively little to show for it. Now it seems to be on the verge of being cancelled or slashed back, and in response people are saying that this proves VR, something Carmack champions, is commercially untenable or even that Carmack himself is partly responsible for the failed initiative. I don't even entirely agree with him on the question of whether anyone should try developing a new OS, but he's been proven absolutely right that there was no room for him to be that complacent about the use of Meta's resources.

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#230

Post by the-rc »

dist1ll wrote: post #200
jnwatson wrote: post #23

I've written a lot of low level software, BSPs, and most of an OS, and the main reason to not write your own OS these days is silicon vendors. Back in the day, they would provide you a spec detailed enough that you could feasibly write your own drivers. These days, you get a medium-level description and a Linux driver of questionable quality. Part of this is just laziness, but mostly this is a function of complexity.…

Intel still does it. As far as I can see they're the only player in town that provide open, detailed documentation for their high-speed NICs [0]. You can actually write a driver for their 100Gb cards from scratch using their datasheet. Most other vendors would either (1) ignore you, (2) make you sign an NDA or (3) refer you to their poorly documented Linux/BSD driver. Not sure what the situation is for other hardware…

On the other hand, see the complete mess that are the IPU6/7 camera chipsets and their Linux support.
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