8 ms·

This talk was such a treat. After all the carefuly crafted hype from Zuck and the gang, Carmack threw huge bucket of cold water on everything. I think it's just

This talk was such a treat. After all the carefuly crafted hype from Zuck and the gang, Carmack threw huge bucket of cold water on everything. I think it's just wonderful that he's allowed to speak so openly, about the things he's proud of, the things he thinks are failures, internal politics, the possibilities for improvement, the real hard physical limits VR is running into, and his growing pessimism for the future of VR. I could really hear it in his talk why he moved on to spend more time on his next passion. Since it sounded to me like the low hanging mobile VR fruit has been picked, I went ahead and pre-ordered my very first HMD afterwards. Time to see for myself if this is the computing future or an evolutionary dead end.

test1235 6y ago
>I could really hear it in his talk why he moved on to spend more time on his next passion what is he moving onto?
- aantix 6y ago
  AGI, artificial general intelligence as an independent researcher.
  - thomasfortes 6y ago
    He was complaining a couple days ago in twitter that he couldn't buy a ton of expensive gpu machines on GCP as an independent researcher, but being John Carmack someone from google stepped up and fixed it for him.
    - runevault 6y ago
      Was that where he was talking about how Google wanted him to have a website to prove his validity (before people stepped in of course). Reading that thread was bizarre...
      - cyrux004 6y ago
        haha, yes that was it
    - easton 6y ago
      I wonder why he didn’t just move over to Azure, they don’t make a distinction between a corporate person and an individual, as long as you can pay your bill. (I’ve never hit the oh no limit, anyway. He’s probably using a ton of power though).
    - ksec 6y ago
      Link below. Anyway why do they have such a low quota? To stop people from using it for Crypto? But surely they could have make multiple account if it needs to be. So why put a limit? https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1305967411749892098 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1305967411749892098
  - ilaksh 6y ago
    Actually I just realized, after thinking about the forward looking AR research talk by the VP or whoever, that AGI is actually the long-term research goal for Facebook's AR. They want a personal assistant that understands the world well enough to insert content that you need. So John is actually still working on the next phase of the Facebook AR project in my opinion.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
      Nope. He's collaborating with his son on it, and he's being extremely careful to keep the work highly partitioned for IP reasons. He doesn't want a repeat of the ZenniMax lawsuit. I'd read it as his sunset project for his career, where he gets to take a longshot at something really ambitious, while enjoying hacking with his son.
      - ilaksh 6y ago
        I didn't mean he was actually working for Facebook. I meant it's an extension of the project there. Even though it seems unrelated.
criddell 6y ago
> Time to see for myself if this is the computing future or an evolutionary dead end. There's a third possibility - VR is finally here and consumer market is what it is. It's not going to take over the world but it isn't going away either.
- dougmwne 6y ago
  I'd say that is the same as a dead end. Right now this is a very expensive, multi-billion dollar toy with toy demonstrator apps and proof of concept games. It needs to be a game changer and the future of something or the research funding and developer ecosystem are going to dry up. And given the amount that Facebook must be losing on the Quest 2 and the all-in nature of this launch, if this doesn't take off now, the runway for Oculus at FB may be over.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    In my opinion it’s just like every other games console: an expensive toy that no one needs and lots of people buy anyway because it’s decent fun.
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      Meh, the resolution is super close to where it needs to be to read comfortably in the headset and do real work (and with wireless headsets with inside-out tracking, the annoying setup overhead is all but eliminated). That can make it a valuable peripheral, like a nice monitor without all the space requirements. It won't likely ever be as big of a platform as smartphones are, though. So I overall agree with you.
  - munificent 6y ago
    > It needs to be a game changer and the future of something or the research funding and developer ecosystem are going to dry up. I hate that we live in a world so dominated by network effects, economies of scale, corporate consolidation, and shareholder value that there are fewer and fewer realms where "small success" still exists.
olau 6y ago
I watched the whole thing and I don't understand how you arrived at him having a growing pessimism for the future of VR? I had the opposite impression. He did seem to care about VR as a general purpose system (alternative to traditional monitors), even if it's not quite there yet, both due to hardware and software limitations. He also seemed proud that they were actually shipping stuff.
- dougmwne 6y ago
  Yes, I do think he was very proud of the shipping product and saw that there were many more achievable gains. My impression of pessimism came from his skepticism that Moore's law would continue long enough to get them to where they really wanted to be on mobile VR, his struggles with latency probably making cloud rendering a poor experience for most, recognition that they were already at the ceiling of their heat and power budget, his belief that foveated rendering was not going to save the day, his recognition that the lenses were now a limiting factor vs the screen for image quality and that other lens designs would be fragile and suboptimal in a shipping product. I didn't mean to say that I thought he was pessimistic about VR overall, just that he didn't seem to think there were any large gains in hardware quality coming soon and it was down to the software to make full use of what was there.
  - jonny_wonny 6y ago
    I mean, I think the last thing he said regarding Moore’s Law was the comment about what that AMD exec said, which was basically that they still have tons of room for future improvements.
    - dougmwne 6y ago
      He said he was skeptical of that exec's claim, just not in a super call them out way. I did not take that section to be particularly optimistic. We are probably near the end of die shrinks anyway, and with them, the thermal advantage they bring.
      - 6y ago
timleewards 6y ago
I sure hope you want for a pc vr headset and not the oculus quest. HTC Vive Pro and Valve Index are simply stunning and can see them become the future of gaming.
- theschwa 6y ago
  With the Quest being able to be used as both a PC VR and and standalone, why not Quest? I'm saying this as someone who owns 4 different VR headsets, and I find myself using my Quest 1 the most.
  - ghthor 6y ago
    The visual quality of the Index is hard to compare to the Quest.
  - timleewards 6y ago
    Interesting - i steered away of oculus generally speaking as it was by far the buggiest headset I owned. From what gather tho it can only play low spec games decently. For instance, how does it handle Alyx?
    - dougmwne 6y ago
      I think it can only play Alyx through the link on PC, unless Valve decides to port it at some point in the future, which seems unlikely since they have their own investments in VR as a platform.
      - timleewards 6y ago
        Valve is not able to port it - and likely never will be - simply because as a low end headset, the quest cant handle it. From what i read, oculus link leads to latency and compression quality losses so it cant really he played via cable either.
        ehaliewicz2 6y ago
gabereiser 6y ago
>I think it’s just so wonderful he’s to speak so openly... John is known for being completely candid in his talks. It comes with the territory. It’s like, you get carmack’s mind, but you also get his mouth... I for one, would accept that. I listened to his quakecon talks about the physics of light many many times. The guy is fascinating how his mind works. But more importantly, he speaks his mind because he has the chops to back it up and ACTUALLY FIX the things he complains about.
mlindner 6y ago
Hopefully you went with a real VR headset instead of the Quest. I guarantee you will be disappointed with the Quest.
- andybak 6y ago
  I own several headsets including a Quest and I'd be happy with any of them. I guarantee you're mistaken.
chaostheory 6y ago
I don't understand how you equated Carmack speaking about implementation challenges with being "pessimistic about VR". He still seems very gung ho about VR EDIT: if he's moving towards other projects, actions speak louder than words. I didn't get that from his talk, or maybe I just missed it.
- jonny_wonny 6y ago
  Yeah, that dude definitely didn’t comprehend Carmack’s talk very well. Carmack wasn’t in any way pessimistic about VR, he’s just disappointed with the pace that things are moving in. As he said, he always wants things to move faster. But if anything, Carmack expressed overall optimism. He said that we pretty much have everything we need to implement his ideal vision of VR. It’s just a matter of putting all the pieces together.
  - dougmwne 6y ago
    Farther up I detailed the specific things I thought Carmack was most pessimistic on. I clarified that I don't think he's down on VR, just on big hardware gains on mobile in the near future. I took it to mean "Hardware's done. Have at it, devs." And I think that's the reason he's moving on to the next project, since this tech is now in the polishing phase and out of the pioneer phase. I think it's a good thing and a sign of a maturing platform, just like how slowing advances in smartphone hardware marked the begining of their global sales s-curve (LTE retina iphone 4 in 2010).

test1235 6y ago

>I could really hear it in his talk why he moved on to spend more time on his next passion what is he moving onto?

aantix 6y ago
AGI, artificial general intelligence as an independent researcher.
- thomasfortes 6y ago
  He was complaining a couple days ago in twitter that he couldn't buy a ton of expensive gpu machines on GCP as an independent researcher, but being John Carmack someone from google stepped up and fixed it for him.
  - runevault 6y ago
    Was that where he was talking about how Google wanted him to have a website to prove his validity (before people stepped in of course). Reading that thread was bizarre...
    - cyrux004 6y ago
      haha, yes that was it
  - easton 6y ago
    I wonder why he didn’t just move over to Azure, they don’t make a distinction between a corporate person and an individual, as long as you can pay your bill. (I’ve never hit the oh no limit, anyway. He’s probably using a ton of power though).
  - ksec 6y ago
    Link below. Anyway why do they have such a low quota? To stop people from using it for Crypto? But surely they could have make multiple account if it needs to be. So why put a limit? https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1305967411749892098 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1305967411749892098
- ilaksh 6y ago
  Actually I just realized, after thinking about the forward looking AR research talk by the VP or whoever, that AGI is actually the long-term research goal for Facebook's AR. They want a personal assistant that understands the world well enough to insert content that you need. So John is actually still working on the next phase of the Facebook AR project in my opinion.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    Nope. He's collaborating with his son on it, and he's being extremely careful to keep the work highly partitioned for IP reasons. He doesn't want a repeat of the ZenniMax lawsuit. I'd read it as his sunset project for his career, where he gets to take a longshot at something really ambitious, while enjoying hacking with his son.
    - ilaksh 6y ago
      I didn't mean he was actually working for Facebook. I meant it's an extension of the project there. Even though it seems unrelated.

criddell 6y ago

> Time to see for myself if this is the computing future or an evolutionary dead end. There's a third possibility - VR is finally here and consumer market is what it is. It's not going to take over the world but it isn't going away either.

dougmwne 6y ago
I'd say that is the same as a dead end. Right now this is a very expensive, multi-billion dollar toy with toy demonstrator apps and proof of concept games. It needs to be a game changer and the future of something or the research funding and developer ecosystem are going to dry up. And given the amount that Facebook must be losing on the Quest 2 and the all-in nature of this launch, if this doesn't take off now, the runway for Oculus at FB may be over.
- ben_w 6y ago
  In my opinion it’s just like every other games console: an expensive toy that no one needs and lots of people buy anyway because it’s decent fun.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    Meh, the resolution is super close to where it needs to be to read comfortably in the headset and do real work (and with wireless headsets with inside-out tracking, the annoying setup overhead is all but eliminated). That can make it a valuable peripheral, like a nice monitor without all the space requirements. It won't likely ever be as big of a platform as smartphones are, though. So I overall agree with you.
- munificent 6y ago
  > It needs to be a game changer and the future of something or the research funding and developer ecosystem are going to dry up. I hate that we live in a world so dominated by network effects, economies of scale, corporate consolidation, and shareholder value that there are fewer and fewer realms where "small success" still exists.

olau 6y ago

I watched the whole thing and I don't understand how you arrived at him having a growing pessimism for the future of VR? I had the opposite impression. He did seem to care about VR as a general purpose system (alternative to traditional monitors), even if it's not quite there yet, both due to hardware and software limitations. He also seemed proud that they were actually shipping stuff.

dougmwne 6y ago
Yes, I do think he was very proud of the shipping product and saw that there were many more achievable gains. My impression of pessimism came from his skepticism that Moore's law would continue long enough to get them to where they really wanted to be on mobile VR, his struggles with latency probably making cloud rendering a poor experience for most, recognition that they were already at the ceiling of their heat and power budget, his belief that foveated rendering was not going to save the day, his recognition that the lenses were now a limiting factor vs the screen for image quality and that other lens designs would be fragile and suboptimal in a shipping product. I didn't mean to say that I thought he was pessimistic about VR overall, just that he didn't seem to think there were any large gains in hardware quality coming soon and it was down to the software to make full use of what was there.
- jonny_wonny 6y ago
  I mean, I think the last thing he said regarding Moore’s Law was the comment about what that AMD exec said, which was basically that they still have tons of room for future improvements.
  - dougmwne 6y ago
    He said he was skeptical of that exec's claim, just not in a super call them out way. I did not take that section to be particularly optimistic. We are probably near the end of die shrinks anyway, and with them, the thermal advantage they bring.
    - 6y ago

timleewards 6y ago

I sure hope you want for a pc vr headset and not the oculus quest. HTC Vive Pro and Valve Index are simply stunning and can see them become the future of gaming.

theschwa 6y ago
With the Quest being able to be used as both a PC VR and and standalone, why not Quest? I'm saying this as someone who owns 4 different VR headsets, and I find myself using my Quest 1 the most.
- ghthor 6y ago
  The visual quality of the Index is hard to compare to the Quest.
- timleewards 6y ago
  Interesting - i steered away of oculus generally speaking as it was by far the buggiest headset I owned. From what gather tho it can only play low spec games decently. For instance, how does it handle Alyx?
  - dougmwne 6y ago
    I think it can only play Alyx through the link on PC, unless Valve decides to port it at some point in the future, which seems unlikely since they have their own investments in VR as a platform.
    - timleewards 6y ago
      Valve is not able to port it - and likely never will be - simply because as a low end headset, the quest cant handle it. From what i read, oculus link leads to latency and compression quality losses so it cant really he played via cable either.
      - ehaliewicz2 6y ago

gabereiser 6y ago

>I think it’s just so wonderful he’s to speak so openly... John is known for being completely candid in his talks. It comes with the territory. It’s like, you get carmack’s mind, but you also get his mouth... I for one, would accept that. I listened to his quakecon talks about the physics of light many many times. The guy is fascinating how his mind works. But more importantly, he speaks his mind because he has the chops to back it up and ACTUALLY FIX the things he complains about.

mlindner 6y ago

Hopefully you went with a real VR headset instead of the Quest. I guarantee you will be disappointed with the Quest.

andybak 6y ago
I own several headsets including a Quest and I'd be happy with any of them. I guarantee you're mistaken.

chaostheory 6y ago

I don't understand how you equated Carmack speaking about implementation challenges with being "pessimistic about VR". He still seems very gung ho about VR EDIT: if he's moving towards other projects, actions speak louder than words. I didn't get that from his talk, or maybe I just missed it.

jonny_wonny 6y ago
Yeah, that dude definitely didn’t comprehend Carmack’s talk very well. Carmack wasn’t in any way pessimistic about VR, he’s just disappointed with the pace that things are moving in. As he said, he always wants things to move faster. But if anything, Carmack expressed overall optimism. He said that we pretty much have everything we need to implement his ideal vision of VR. It’s just a matter of putting all the pieces together.
- dougmwne 6y ago
  Farther up I detailed the specific things I thought Carmack was most pessimistic on. I clarified that I don't think he's down on VR, just on big hardware gains on mobile in the near future. I took it to mean "Hardware's done. Have at it, devs." And I think that's the reason he's moving on to the next project, since this tech is now in the polishing phase and out of the pioneer phase. I think it's a good thing and a sign of a maturing platform, just like how slowing advances in smartphone hardware marked the begining of their global sales s-curve (LTE retina iphone 4 in 2010).