John Carmack talks Virtual Reality and Doom 3.

cageymaru

cageymaru

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John Carmack is building VR headsets and in this interview he explains in depth the limitations of the technology, what is needed to progress the technology, and what he has implemented in his current demo model. Really nice video interview and awesome duct tape headset. He is going to try to have an A/B setup for the upcoming QuakeCon.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/06/06/j...0-kits-available-soon-video-interview-inside/

:)
 
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I was wondering where all of this hot air was coming from......now we know......
 
People still care about this guy? Has not done anything for PC gaming in the last 10+ years. Doom 3 was a tech demo.
 
With Rage's disappointment, I'm not as excited when reading anything with the Carmack name. Don't get me wrong, he's a pioneer, and is incredibly smart, it's just sometimes these ideas are only good on paper. With this headset idea though, I can't see many shelling out $500 for it...not that there won't be people here and there that won't jump all over it.

We'll see.
 
To be fair to Carmack, I think he's just smart enough to understand that your not going to make as much money being a exclusive PC developer as you used to. Development cost are significantly higher than in the 90's and there are fewer people buying PC games. The guy is just trying to make a living. They don't release that many games (money grab) so I think he's still true to his game. Whether what he is releasing is good or not is another argument.
 
bigdogchris said:
To be fair to Carmack, I think he's just smart enough to understand that your not going to make as much money being a exclusive PC developer as you used to. Development cost are significantly higher than in the 90's and there are fewer people buying PC games. The guy is just trying to make a living. They don't release that many games (money grab) so I think he's still true to his game. Whether what he is releasing is good or not is another argument.
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I was just pretty much alluding to that point. :p
 
Virtual Reality is something that interests me less for shooters and more for sims. I'd love to try a good virtual reality system for a racing sim, I think it'd be awesome.
 
If the price point gets low enough, I can't imagine why I wouldn't get myself an HMD at some point in the future. I'll definitely build support for it into my engine project, though, given that it's relatively straightforward to implement. Hopefully other open source engine developers express an intetest for it as well.
 
I haven't really understood the hate for Carmack lately.

Yes, I had high hopes for Rage, and yes, it was a huge disappointment. I do game on the PC, and yes, I feel that id and others have been partially abandoning or even betraying the platform which made them who they are today.

Carmack, however, is an engineer. He is smart enough and is (or was if you prefer) enough of a gamer to help produce new IP, but he has always leaned more towards the technical side.

Have some of his ideas fallen short? Of course they have, but he has always sought to innovate. When you seek to innovate, to follow new ideas, sometimes you hit gold, and sometimes you fall short. In his case, his position is somewhat unique in that he is more robust throughout the process (and specifically his failures).

Whether or not Rage implemented it successfully, texture streaming is still a cool idea. It is a cool new technology to be part of an engine, and who knows, maybe another game will come along and implement it to benefit PCs and not just consoles.

On that note, when one talks about him focusing on technology which may very well benefit consoles more than PCs, one must again remember that he is, primarily, an engineer, and software engineers, for the most part, are better served to be platform agnostic.

For him, he is given a direction, and he runs with it. He sees problems and thinks up ways to solve them. To him, the technology behind what he has done is beautiful, even if the rest of us don't agree that the result is beautiful.

He loves what he does, and I say, more power to him.
 
Q-BZ said:
Right? Is he even relevant any more?
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Moreso than most.

TESLA said:
Whether or not Rage implemented it successfully, texture streaming is still a cool idea. It is a cool new technology to be part of an engine, and who knows, maybe another game will come along and implement it to benefit PCs and not just consoles.
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Frostbite 2 does some texture streaming to good effect. It's to good effect in Rage, too, in some cases. The technology itself is sound, but logistical problems prevent it from being as viable as it could be.
 
I think this looks really interesting. Carmack is pretty much the only name in the industry right now that seems to care about how games are played or really advancing the technology behind them. Say what you want about Rage as a game it doesn't take from the work Carmack put in as an engineer. People like to blame him for Doom 3 and Rage but he's not a developer, that isn't his job. Carmack makes engines and stuff like this, he's not the guy that sits down and designs how a game plays or it's story or whatever else.

I love that he talks about giving these things to people that modify hardware and like to play with stuff like this and letting them work on it and make it better. It's really one of those things where it seems like he is looking at this technology as an engineer or DIY guy instead of as an executive simply looking to make money.

Carmack has always seemed like one of the most interesting people in the industry. He's one of the few names in the industry I think I'd love to just sit down and talk about their thoughts and opinions on things.
 
TESLA said:
I haven't really understood the hate for Carmack lately.
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I think the major reason is the high expectation people have from him. He's this brilliant guy who were able to create game engines that make good use of the computing power available at that time with his early 3D titles which was what propelled him to fame.

People naturally expect the same thing from him, but due the shift in the gaming industry to consoles, he can no longer do what he do best. Instead of coming up with interesting thing to do with the latest hardware out there, he's stuck with a god forsaken 5 year old hardware.

Of course he may still use his talent in making the most out of it, but an old hardware is just that, there's only so much you can do there's a limit no one can avoid. Whatever game engine he have is going to get lost among all the others who can't do any better than the other simply because everyone has hit the limit. He can't stand out.

Would he still be able to make something spectacular given the freedom to utilize the latest and greatest hardware again? I think its possible but we'll never know.
 
I was a fan of Carmack's until he dumped Rage on us and told PC gamers to "deal with being second fiddle".

After that mess , he can go fuck himself. VR is so 1990's , way to throw back into something that never really took off. There is a reason why people didn't like wearing heavy , hot head gear .. it sucked.

I can't wait to see the mess he'll make out of Doom 4 after what he did with Rage :(

Edit : A preview video showing him talking about it : http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NYa8kirsUfg
 
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Godmachine said:
After that mess , he can go fuck himself. VR is so 1990's , way to throw back into something that never really took off. There is a reason why people didn't like wearing heavy , hot head gear .. it sucked.
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Yes, it did. That's pretty much exactly what he's said in interviews: there was basically no evolution in that space since the 90's. He and other people in the HMD community are working towards changing that so that 'virtual reality' doesn't suck.
 
wonderfield said:
Yes, it did. That's pretty much exactly what he's said in interviews: there was basically no evolution in that space since the 90's. He and other people in the HMD community are working towards changing that so that 'virtual reality' doesn't suck.
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Yeah, I think people might have missed the part where he's actually talking about the flaws and why it's currently not viable but is increasingly becoming viable with some effort. Personally I found it interesting and would love to see practical VR in the future.
 
TESLA said:
I haven't really understood the hate for Carmack lately.

Yes, I had high hopes for Rage, and yes, it was a huge disappointment. I do game on the PC, and yes, I feel that id and others have been partially abandoning or even betraying the platform which made them who they are today.

Carmack, however, is an engineer. He is smart enough and is (or was if you prefer) enough of a gamer to help produce new IP, but he has always leaned more towards the technical side.

Have some of his ideas fallen short? Of course they have, but he has always sought to innovate. When you seek to innovate, to follow new ideas, sometimes you hit gold, and sometimes you fall short. In his case, his position is somewhat unique in that he is more robust throughout the process (and specifically his failures).

Whether or not Rage implemented it successfully, texture streaming is still a cool idea. It is a cool new technology to be part of an engine, and who knows, maybe another game will come along and implement it to benefit PCs and not just consoles.

On that note, when one talks about him focusing on technology which may very well benefit consoles more than PCs, one must again remember that he is, primarily, an engineer, and software engineers, for the most part, are better served to be platform agnostic.

For him, he is given a direction, and he runs with it. He sees problems and thinks up ways to solve them. To him, the technology behind what he has done is beautiful, even if the rest of us don't agree that the result is beautiful.

He loves what he does, and I say, more power to him.
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I agree. The hate for john on this forum is just ridiculous. He is an extremely smart guy that has had quite the impact on 3d technology. So his last game didn't push the PC to the limits? Who cares? He makes game engines (and then open sources them), makes rockets, and is now trying to advance HMD technology. That's pretty fucking awesome.
 
wonderfield said:
Yes, it did. That's pretty much exactly what he's said in interviews: there was basically no evolution in that space since the 90's. He and other people in the HMD community are working towards changing that so that 'virtual reality' doesn't suck.
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Still doesn't change the fact that he soured many of his fan base in the gaming community by snubbing his nose at us and releasing a buggy game like Rage.

If he expects me to dump $600 (headset + accessories) than he'll have to really step forward VR tech in a way that fulfills the promises of the technology since it was introduced in the early 90's. I'm glad he builds rockets and is attempting to help change the way we explore LEO but I'm quite reserved on him being able to convince loads of gamers to drop $600 on his VR helm at this point in time.
 
Godmachine said:
Still doesn't change the fact that he soured many of his fan base in the gaming community by snubbing his nose at us and releasing a buggy game like Rage.

If he expects me to dump $600 (headset + accessories) than he'll have to really step forward VR tech in a way that fulfills the promises of the technology since it was introduced in the early 90's. I'm glad he builds rockets and is attempting to help change the way we explore LEO but I'm quite reserved on him being able to convince loads of gamers to drop $600 on his VR helm at this point in time.
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Carmack is an engine developer, not a game developer. HE didn't release Rage, id Software did.

No he does not expect YOU to buy it. In fact he is quite clear that the people he wants to sell the kit to are the types of people that will work on it and improve it.
 
I got set straight here in this thread. I retract my "is Carmack even relevant?" question.
 
Q-BZ said:
I got set straight here in this thread. I retract my "is Carmack even relevant?" question.
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Are you sure? I had a great "In his virtual reality he is" line. I don't want to let it go wasted.
 
piscian18 said:
Are you sure? I had a great "In his virtual reality he is" line. I don't want to let it go wasted.
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Can't take away from the tech side of things but yeah, that was a pretty snazzy line. You'll have to remember to use it again before too long. ;)
 
Derangel said:
Carmack is an engine developer, not a game developer. HE didn't release Rage, id Software did.

No he does not expect YOU to buy it. In fact he is quite clear that the people he wants to sell the kit to are the types of people that will work on it and improve it.
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He worked on Rage as part of its development and there are several quotes of him floating around saying as much.

Rage has been in the pipe for six years. "We invented this genre and we followed it a long ways...Maybe we shouldn't have been quite as ambitious."
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"Everything we envisioned pretty much made it into the game."
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And he goes on with regret with making console development the priority :

When we started on the game six years ago, I looked at the consoles and said ‘These are as good as the PCs that we're on here’, and our development strategy was set up such that we basically developed live on all the platforms there. And now when we’re looking at PCs that have ten times the horsepower of the consoles... I’m making a large change in my direction, just saying ‘We should be focusing on building things efficiently on the PC and [then] deploying on to consoles.’ And we didn’t make that as crisp of a distinction as we should have.
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But he also says the following only a week apart which almost seems in jest :

"You can choose to design a game around the specs of a high-end PC and make console versions that fail to hit the design point, or design around the specs of the consoles and have a high-end PC provide incremental quality improvements. We chose the latter."
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I'm sorry but he seems just lost on what he wants to do and what Id should do as well. Rage was never fully fixed for the PC , there are still texture loading issues to this day and regardless of what video driver you use (which is what he blames many of the issues on) texture popping is still a problem because of the in game engine.

Perhaps I'm alone in my feelings towards his ideal's of the future of gaming will be at this point , I think when it comes to gaming he's lost touch and I'm not about to dump $600 on a product just because he's telling me it'll be great. I dumped $60 on one last year and was quite disappointed.

Would you be willing to dump $600 on what John Carmack feels will be the future of gaming.. again? If this VR helm actually becomes something worth looking into , I'll eat my words. But I'm willing to bet its another interesting concept that can't quite hit the mark , like many VR helms that hit the market yearly.
 
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Godmachine said:
Perhaps I'm alone in my feelings towards his ideal's of the future of gaming will be at this point , I think when it comes to gaming he's lost touch and I'm not about to dump $600 on a product just because he's telling me it'll be great. I dumped $60 on one last year and was quite disappointed.

Would you be willing to dump $600 on what John Carmack feels will be the future of gaming.. again?
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Depends on how well it's supported. Would I spend $600 on what he has now and another copy of Doom 3? Fuck no. Would I be willing to spend $400-600 in a year if this gets picked up by the hardware community and fine tuned like Carmack wants? Probably. I mean hell I spent $300 on controller that only supported two games (Steel Battalion) and over $100 on the Novient Falcon. I even have a TackIR in my closet. So yeah I'd be the type of person to give this a try once the support gets there and the tech advances a little. Whatever his thoughts on game development are right now, Carmack is still a very intelligent person and one that I think is worth paying attention to.
 
Godmachine said:
If he expects me to dump $600 (headset + accessories) than he'll have to really step forward VR tech in a way that fulfills the promises of the technology since it was introduced in the early 90's.
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I doubt he cares whether you buy into VR or not. It's not his product: he's funneling his own personal money into the development of a completely open source HMD project and talking to display vendors to try to get better technology into the Rift (which, again, isn't his product, and isn't even itself an actual product) and other HMDs.

This isn't some id Software HMD device he's pushing, and it's unlikely that he, id or Bethesda are going to be involved in any business pursuit that entails selling HMD hardware. This is just him saying "hey, this stuff is neat, you can buy stuff from other people to make it, and we have a game that supports all that now."
 
Godmachine said:
I was a fan of Carmack's until he dumped Rage on us and told PC gamers to "deal with being second fiddle".

After that mess , he can go fuck himself. VR is so 1990's , way to throw back into something that never really took off. There is a reason why people didn't like wearing heavy , hot head gear .. it sucked.

I can't wait to see the mess he'll make out of Doom 4 after what he did with Rage :(

Edit : A preview video showing him talking about it : http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NYa8kirsUfg
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True but I'd love to see you eating crows pie if he announced Quake 5 to go with it, being a throwback to the first Quake like he has hinted they might do.
 
ShuttleLuv said:
True but I'd love to see you eating crows pie if he announced Quake 5 to go with it, being a throwback to the first Quake like he has hinted they might do.
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I'll bet you'll fart a full size adult cow before he does this :cool:
 
Master_of_Sparks said:
He's too busy building fucking rockets while you're complaining on forums.
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Complaining about what the guy is not relevant to PC gaming anymore. He makes games for iPhones. He has not done anything of merit since Quake 3. No one is saying he is not smart he is just out of his element now. His days are have passed, get off the hero warship kick.
 
When we started on the game six years ago, I looked at the consoles and said ‘These are as good as the PCs that we're on here’, and our development strategy was set up such that we basically developed live on all the platforms there. And now when we’re looking at PCs that have ten times the horsepower of the consoles... I’m making a large change in my direction, just saying ‘We should be focusing on building things efficiently on the PC and [then] deploying on to consoles.’ And we didn’t make that as crisp of a distinction as we should have.
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How the fuck can John Carmack who has been in the scene since the early 90s not know this was going to happen.
 
StaticSurge said:
How the fuck can John Carmack who has been in the scene since the early 90s not know this was going to happen.
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Rage was supposed to take three years. It took six. You just can't make good predictions that far out. You might hit the mark sometimes, but you can't do it reliably.
 
I've never understood the hate for VR headsets. When all the technology is finally there it will be an amazing gaming experience. Like always, the dreamers of the world (few they may be) must lead the many, willing or unwilling into the future.
 
StaticSurge said:
How the fuck can John Carmack who has been in the scene since the early 90s not know this was going to happen.
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That point is he did. And to those saying he wasn't involved in Rage , are you fucking kidding me? Of course he was. He didn't direct the project but you can bet he updated the engine and worked on its release during its development cycle.

Everyone seems to think all John Carmack wants to do these day's is mess with rockets when he is clearly interested in more than just rockets alone. He knew that this kind of release strategy can end ugly and that his audience is mostly a PC only audience. It took 6 years (too long) and it was full of problems when it released (which he and Tim promptly blamed on AMD and Nvidia).

Call it whining because I really couldn't give a shit. I refuse to support him or Id after what they did with Rage. Does that mean I won't ever change my mind? No , it doesn't. But its going to take quite an amazing product to do so.
 
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