John Carmack Becomes Oculus VR CTO - UPDATED

[Andy Chalk]

John Carmack Becomes Oculus VR CTO - UPDATED

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/idSoftware/status/365124044405739521]​

John Carmack of id Software fame has become the Chief Technical Officer at Oculus VR.

Oculus VR, the creator of the Oculus Rift headset, announced today that id Software co-founder John Carmack is the company's new Chief Technology Officer, and will work "full time" out of its new office in Dallas, Texas.

"The dream of VR has been simmering in the background for decades, but now, the people and technologies are finally aligning to allow it to reach the potential we imagined," Carmack said in a statement. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey said Carmack's early experiments "put Oculus on the map and helped create an amazing amount of momentum around virtual reality. His technical genius and passion for solving hard problems makes him the ideal CTO."

Carmack confirmed his new role on the Oculus Kickstarter page [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step-into-the-game/posts/562211?ref=email&show_token=dbd4956232339a13], where he wrote, "I have fond memories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming - the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods, and so on. Duct taping a strap and hot gluing sensors onto Palmer's early prototype Rift and writing the code to drive it ranks right up there. Now is a special time. I believe that VR will have a huge impact in the coming years, but everyone working today is a pioneer. The paradigms that everyone will take for granted in the future are being figured out today; probably by people reading this message. It's certainly not there yet. There is a lot more work to do, and there are problems we don't even know about that will need to be solved, but I am eager to work on them. It's going to be awesome!"

While the email accompanying the press release referred to Carmack as "formerly at id Software," a Betheseda rep told Gamasutra [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/197803/John_Carmack_joins_Oculus_VR_team_as_CTO.php], "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'll update with further details as they become available.

UPDATE: Id Software has confirmed that Carmack is not leaving the studio, @ID_AA_Carmack [https://twitter.com/idSoftware/status/365124044405739521] is not leaving id & will continue to provide leadership for our games in development."


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[Morsomk_v1legacy]

Umm....ok. Sort of not expected but considering that of the few things that I know of John Carmack, is that he likes technology very much, I can see why he wanted to do this and I hope that he is successful in whatever they are doing over there.

 

[Atmos Duality]

*John Carmack assumes a full time position outside of id Software*
*Bethesda rep claims this won't impact his contributions to their games*

I find these two statements amusing in a bizarre sort of way. See if you can guess why.

 

[Covarr]

Considering John Carmack is quite possibly the greatest programmer of all time (suck it, Torvalds), this can only be good news for the Rift. I think it's safe to say he'll fix any and all latency issues single-handedly.

P.S. Thanks

 

[shiajun]

Good for Carmack to keep pushing the line. I, however, have the perception of the Occulus Rift becoming vaporware. It's been touted for how long, exactly?

 

[Rad Party God]

I think I'm gonna play some Doom 3 now to see his genious again.

I just finished Doom 3 last month and I'm replaying Quake 2, with Quake 1, Doom 1/2 waiting to also be replayed :3

OT: As much as I dislike the "new" id Software, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Carmack, he has almost single handedly moved the industry to where it is now, along with Shigeru Miyamoto, he's one of the biggest minds and I can't wait to see what he can do for the already impressive Rift.

 

[Pyrian]

I, however, have the perception of the Occulus Rift becoming vaporware. It's been touted for how long, exactly?

Vaporware is for things that are promised, but do not exist and are not going to. The Oculus Rift already exists. Indeed, the HD version already exists. Not really vaporware.

 

[Darth_Payn]

Good news for Carmack! Maybe he can work the same magic with Oculus as he did with id! Now hopefully he can once again change AAA game development for the better.

 

[V8 Ninja]

So mass-market VR is going to happen and within my lifetime. That's nice.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

John Carmack Becomes Oculus VR CTO - UPDATED

Wait, if this is such a good technology, then why do they need a Kickstarter? Couldn't they just fund the company in the normal ways? Hell, Carmack probably has more personal walking-around money than the Kickstarter raised.

 

[shiajun]

I, however, have the perception of the Occulus Rift becoming vaporware. It's been touted for how long, exactly?

Vaporware is for things that are promised, but do not exist and are not going to. The Oculus Rift already exists. Indeed, the HD version already exists. Not really vaporware.

Can you buy it, even the HD version? Can you forsee any moment in the near future where you will be able to buy it? As far as I know (and I could be wrong)it exists merely as prototypes for developers. It's been delaying its lauch for a while now. While not yet vaporware, it could walk that path if all this momentum it has raised for a while now doesn't materialize.

catpcha: go gadget go. Well yet, it should get going by now.

 

[Entitled]

Wait, if this is such a good technology, then why do they need a Kickstarter? Couldn't they just fund the company in the normal ways? Hell, Carmack probably has more personal walking-around money than the Kickstarter raised.

First of all, the Kickstarter happened over a year ago, back when Carmack was supporting it from the distance. The creator, Palmer Luckey, doesn't have more walking-around money than what the Kickstarter raised.

And the company *is* funded the normal way.

The Kickstarter wasn't used for running the company in general, but for selling the first batch of dev kits, in a classic example of Kickstarter as a preorder system. Pay $300, get an Oculus Rift devkit a few months later. This was a huge amount of money that only a large tech corrporation could have invested in advance, and if the same technology would have been invented a few years earlier, it's creators would have been screwed "normal way" funding or not, either trying to ship dev kits to hobbyists by the dozens, or selling the whole concept to Sony and then have it rot in development hell for a decade.

 

[Pyrian]

I, however, have the perception of the Occulus Rift becoming vaporware. It's been touted for how long, exactly?

Vaporware is for things that are promised, but do not exist and are not going to. The Oculus Rift already exists. Indeed, the HD version already exists. Not really vaporware.

Can you buy it, even the HD version? Can you forsee any moment in the near future where you will be able to buy it? As far as I know (and I could be wrong)it exists merely as prototypes for developers. It's been delaying its lauch for a while now. While not yet vaporware, it could walk that path if all this momentum it has raised for a while now doesn't materialize.

First off, even if everything you say is true (which it isn't), that still wouldn't make it vaporware. That's disproven by the mere fact that the product exists.

Now, let's go down the list.

"Can you buy it...?" Yes. Right here: https://www.oculusvr.com/pre-order/

"...even the HD version?" No, that's still in development.

"Can you forsee any moment in the near future where you will be able to buy it?" No release date has been announced, so if "near future" means within 3 months, the answer is certainly not; until the hardware is finalized, manufacturing can't even begin to give an estimate. If "near future" means within a year, I would say most likely yes.

"As far as I know (and I could be wrong)it exists merely as prototypes for developers." You can only buy the prototype for developers. An HD prototype of a consumer version was demo'd at E3. And I can say with some confidence that some of the people with developer versions are not, strictly speaking, developers at all.

"It's been delaying its lauch for a while now." It delayed its launch once, for three months, after unanticipated demand. A kickstarter delay of at least three months is so expected that it hardly qualifies as a "delay" at all, IMO. Keep in mind, also, that it's Kickstarter began less than a year ago. This is going very quick, for experimental hardware development.

"While not yet vaporware, it could walk that path if all this momentum it has raised for a while now doesn't materialize." It has already failed the most basic test of vaporware: It exists.

 

[RandV80]

I, however, have the perception of the Occulus Rift becoming vaporware. It's been touted for how long, exactly?

Vaporware is for things that are promised, but do not exist and are not going to. The Oculus Rift already exists. Indeed, the HD version already exists. Not really vaporware.

Can you buy it, even the HD version? Can you forsee any moment in the near future where you will be able to buy it? As far as I know (and I could be wrong)it exists merely as prototypes for developers. It's been delaying its lauch for a while now. While not yet vaporware, it could walk that path if all this momentum it has raised for a while now doesn't materialize.

catpcha: go gadget go. Well yet, it should get going by now.

The Occulus Rift was only announced last year, so was probably in development for maybe a year leading up to that. So exactly how long do you think it should take to get a completely new piece of hardware to the market? You're preception seems really out of whack here, especially when the news article being discussed is that one of the leading guys in the game development world is jumping on board.

 

[The Ubermensch]

And in other Oculus related news, H games work with the alpha build

http://visualnovelaer.fuwanovel.org/2013/08/custom-maid-3d-through-oculus-rift-hands-on-experience-via-neogaf/

I can't stop laughing; THE FUTURE OF PORN IS HERE!!!