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Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 2:54 pm
by bitWISE
http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/john-carma ... us-as-cto/

In case the site is down for you:
We have incredible news to share with the community: legendary game programmer John Carmack will be officially joining the Oculus team as our new Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

John is one of the brightest minds of our generation -- pioneer, visionary, and industry legend. There are very few people in the world that can contribute to the Oculus Rift and the future of virtual reality like John can.

John put together a short note for the Oculus community:

“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!”

If you’re unfamiliar with John’s background, John co-founded id Software, served as lead programmer on Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and the Quake series, and is one of the pioneers of 3D graphics. When John’s not working on revolutionizing video games or computer graphics, he can be found coding at Armadillo Aerospace.

If you’ve been following Oculus since the launch of the Kickstarter campaign (or before that on MTBS3D), you know that John has been a part of the project and a true believer in the future of virtual reality since the beginning. He was the first developer to actually integrate the Rift into a game, back when the hardware was just a hand-held prototype without an SDK.

John will be working from the new Oculus Dallas office that we’re opening soon. We’re looking for a few key hires to help us in Dallas, so if you’re interested, check out the Oculus Careers page.

Please join us in welcoming John to the Oculus family! You can follow John at @ID_AA_Carmack on Twitter.

Happy anniversary to our Kickstarter backers! We've come a long a way in 1 year, and we can't wait to show you where we're headed next. This is just the beginning.

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 3:03 pm
by scared?
Instant fail?...

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 3:21 pm
by MKJ
lol
and also lol.

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 8:40 pm
by Doombrain
Who fucking cares?

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 8:43 pm
by xer0s
Testy...

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 12:35 am
by Tsakali
you guys are all dead inside. I 'm all for the technology, and JC having a say in it, is not a bad thing.

Thx for posting

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 12:41 am
by Mogul
This project seems to be where his passion resides, anyway.

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 1:29 am
by obsidian
It's his hobby job. Armadillo Aerospace is winding down since he spent a few million of his own money on it and isn't finding any new investment money, so he needs another side job to keep his genius mind at work before it hits critical mass, goes thermonuclear, and takes out a large part of Texas.

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 7:09 am
by mrd
obsidian wrote:hits critical mass, goes thermonuclear, and takes out a large part of Texas.
Hopefully that part includes Geoff's residence.

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 7:10 am
by mrd
Seems cool, I guess?

VR stuff is kinda dumb if you ask me. It will remain this way until you don't need to wear a gigantic fucking ugly mask on your face. Sign me up for Matrix style, kthx.

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 2:03 pm
by bitWISE
obsidian wrote:It's his hobby job. Armadillo Aerospace is winding down since he spent a few million of his own money on it and isn't finding any new investment money, so he needs another side job to keep his genius mind at work before it hits critical mass, goes thermonuclear, and takes out a large part of Texas.
On twitter he said his priority is currently: oculus then id then armadillo.

I think Oculus could be very cool and with John on board I'm even more excited for it. It could potentially revolutionize 3D films too.

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 2:25 pm
by obsidian
I'm not sure what to make of that, for normal people that means that Oculus is your day job, then you work part time at id and Armadillo on weekends. John Carmack isn't like normal people, he seems to have a superhuman work ethic. In his QC keynote he mentioned how he can now twiddle with code on his iPad during those times of the day when normal people would be idling around... when taking a shit, normal people would be playing Plants vs. Zombies on their iPad, Carmack is probably working out raytracing algorithms.

I think he means that his cybernetic brain is currently allocating more CPU threads on solving Oculus problems than working on the id Tech 5 renderer because it's a fresh problem that intrigues him, but that doesn't mean that he's sitting in some office at Oculus Inc. most days of the week and his responsibilities at id are any more diminished.

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 3:26 pm
by Eraser
Also consider the possibility that since their next game is built using the same engine as Rage, Carmack isn't needed at the forefront of id's engine development work. I bet by the time idTech 6 needs to be made, he's fulltime back at id Software again.

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 4:59 pm
by mjrpes
Carmack has the coding power of 5,000 normal coders. If his salary is $500,000, that's 5,000 coders @ $1000/year.

That's a steal.

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 5:09 pm
by GONNAFISTYA
lol jesus

Hero-worship has always been a bit of a problem in the games industry, but this is kinda retarded. He's a programmer who worked on video games. He didn't cure cancer. You fanboys are falling into the same trap people always do...you expect them to excel at whatever they do no matter what.

Just look what happened to Albert Einstein ffs.

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 5:11 pm
by xer0s
lol, I was about to post something similar. Nerds nerding out over a bigger nerd. He's just a really good programmer...

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 5:12 pm
by mjrpes
Carmack just texted me it's 5,000 coders @ $100/year.

This guy is AMAZING. HOW DOES HE DO IT??!

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 11:24 pm
by losCHUNK
GONNAFISTYA wrote:lol jesus

Hero-worship has always been a bit of a problem in the games industry, but this is kinda retarded. He's a programmer who worked on video games. He didn't cure cancer. You fanboys are falling into the same trap people always do...you expect them to excel at whatever they do no matter what.

Just look what happened to Albert Einstein ffs.
What you're failing to understand is that Carmack = 5,000 coders which means less floor space

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 8:48 am
by Eraser
Matt Hooper follows John Carmack:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013- ... culus-rift

Re: Carmack joins Oculus team as CTO

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 11:43 am
by Deathshroud
This is joyous news.