Incline RIP, id (Carmack has left id for Oculus Rift).

[chestburster]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-08-07-john-carmack-joins-oculus-as-chief-technology-officer

"John Carmack has left id Software to join Oculus VR, the company making Oculus Rift.
There he will take up his new role as chief technology officer."



With Carmack gone, id is so dead.

 

[Xeon]

UPDATE: John Carmack will apparently not be leaving id Software in order to take up his position as CTO at Oculus VR, an id rep has told Polygon. (We're waiting to hear from Bethesda.)

 

[Dexter]

Is it true or not?

Their page has a Blog someone linked to, but that shit is down due to too much traffic: http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/john-carmack-joins-oculus-as-cto/

I'll be happy, happy, happy if this is true.
He can't do shit working on crap console games like Nuu-Wolfenstein, Nuu-Doom (which seems kind of DOOMed anyway) for Bethesda and whatnot anyway, but he can do a world of difference for VR.

“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!”

 

[chestburster]

UPDATE #3: A little more clarification from Bethesda. "John will spend time working out of Oculus as part of his role with them, but he will also continue to work at id."

Still, id is pretty fucked at this point. Can't expect Carmack to spend much time on anything else other than his passion project VR.

 

[dunno lah]

id will continue to be fucked until they get rid of Tim Willits.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

id will continue to be fucked until they get rid of Tim Willits.

Why is that?

 

[TripJack]

id is so dead

id has been dead for more than ten years bro

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

It won't really change much because Carmack hasn't really written code himself for years now. His role at id was more of a director rather than implementing shit himself.

Still curious how Dumb 4 will turn out.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

id is so dead

id has been dead for more than ten years bro

This.

Also good for Carmack! No way in fucking hell should he sit around and make console shooters.

 

[DraQ]

UPDATE #3: A little more clarification from Bethesda. "John will spend time working out of Oculus as part of his role with them, but he will also continue to work at id."

Still, id is pretty fucked at this point. Can't expect Carmack to spend much time on anything else other than his passion project VR.

That's good for both id and his new VR hobby.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

This is an excellent choice from him.

 

[Volrath]

And nothing of value was lost.

 

[Bubbles]

Seems like a winning move for both sides.

 

[DraQ]

To expand upon my previous post:

Seriously, Carmack is no game designer.
He's been proving himself fairly incompetent at actual game making since the end of 1997.
Sure he's been surfing on the wave of his initial reputation and self perpetuating hype for quite a long time, but that too ends eventually.
He might have been a good anchor to keep Romero's derp pinned in one place but his own game ideas have been consistently shitty and unremarkable.

OTOH I don't really question his tech talents although I may sometimes question his direction.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

After mega-texture engine in Rage, I hope he will try to make some immersive VR hardware. He really likes the idea, and can make a diffrence for Oculus as a company.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

More garbage click baiting. Hurray for game journalism!

 

[gromit]

After mega-texture engine in Rage, I hope he will try to make some immersive VR hardware. He really likes the idea, and can make a diffrence for Oculus as a company.

I want to roam around in 3d and paint arbitrarily on imaginary walls.

Regardless of the shittiness of the game, its poor console-centric tuning as delivered, the common (and retarded) "but you could just make a texture then place it" myopia, and -- gasp -- the fact that some games "look better..."

That is a sexy fucking engine with a sexy fucking pipeline and sexy fucking tools. I want to put it in my mouth.

I hope a lot of people imitate it. They will, if asset costs ever get under control... which they should, if we collectively allow creative tasks to continue to be divorced from technical bullshit. (Of course, then they'll have to make sure the art budget isn't eaten up by artistic bullshit... the easier it gets, the harder it is to know when to stop.)

 

[AstroZombie]

Now they need Michael Abrash to complete the VR Dream Team.

 

[felipepepe]

UPDATE #3: A little more clarification from Bethesda. "John will spend time working out of Oculus as part of his role with them, but he will also continue to work at id."

Still, id is pretty fucked at this point. Can't expect Carmack to spend much time on anything else other than his passion project VR.

It's just a "please don't leave us" cry for the shareholders... I doubt he'll do anything at Id anymore.

 

[Metro]

Lol Oculus Rift.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

When I put that clumsy thing on can I still see keyboard and mouse?

 

[Bubbles]

I think the idea is to use eye movements as the primary control input instead of clumsily bashing your fingers into a keyboard.

 

[Dexter]

It's just a "please don't leave us" cry for the shareholders... I doubt he'll do anything at Id anymore.

I would find this very likely, especially considering his latest tweets: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack
He's probably still at "id" for show.

Lol Oculus Rift.

When I put that clumsy thing on can I still see keyboard and mouse?

It's mostly just a display device like a monitor that will make you see everything in 3D (it's some of the best stereo perception I've ever seen) that also has 360° head-tracking so you can look around with it and it'll render it to the monitor in front of you as if you were there and were looking around.

Although the final idea is for it to also have positional tracking to be able to simulate (and display) not only when you turn your head, but also if you lean forward/to the side or duck etc., it's not in the DevKit yet and some people have been abusing the Razer Hydra for that purpose so far: http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/6/4595062/new-oculus-rift-cover-shooter-fps-ulta-realistic

There's no real "official" input device for it yet (although I'm sure they are working on it), most of what people use with the DevKit is either an Xbox 360 Controller, Mouse+Keyboard or the Razer Hydra.
There are some gimmicky games that rely on the head-tracking for controlling purposes like this breakout-clone:

Or this short demo that recognizes if you nod or shake your head:


The best realized "VR game" so far that felt really natural and cool was Lunar Flight, the dude spent a lot of time to build new assets like the inside of the cockpit and rethink his UI paradigm to fit well with it:

 

[Metro]

Dexter

Listen, bro, I know you're like... sixteen but try not to be taken into every shitty technology fad that comes down the pipe.

 

[FeelTheRads]

that also has 360° head-tracking so you can look around with

Cool story, bro. Let me see you do 180 degrees turns with this.
The only thing this shit would be usable for is Myst-likes or something. Even then, just a pointless gimmick.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Not to mention it just looks silly having these diving goggles strapped to your head.