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John Carmack visits Starbase
- DantesKite 5y agoI wonder where Elon Musk would be without Twitter. Still wildly successful, but man that platform is an amplifier.
- gpm 5y agoFor those wondering, Carmack founded the now defunct Armadillo Aerospace (as well as being a well known video game developer).
- hamburgerwah 5y ago"game developer"... He created a couple of small time indie titles : DOOM, Quake, with a hobby company called ID software
- sillysaurusx 5y agoActually, Commander Keen could be called an indie title by today's standards. The success put them in a position to make DOOM. At least, I think that's how the history went. I could be wrong.
- psyc 5y agoEveryone always skips Wolfenstein 3D
- datameta 5y agoAh, yes. FPS #0 People tend to seem to start from #1
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoWolf3D wasn't even Carmack's first FPS. Before that there was Catacomb 3-D.
- gpm 5y agoI did say "well known" But seriously, is there a better title to give him for that part of his work?
- titzer 5y agoPioneer? God?
- gpm 5y agoPioneer is a good suggestion, thanks :)
- masswerk 5y agoPioneer – thirty years after Spacewar? Hum… Edit: Pioneering achievements, yes, certainly, but pioneer as in "game development pioneer"…
- BLKNSLVR 5y agoI believe John Romero appropriated the 'God' title, making it unavailable for Carmack, no matter how appropriate.
- jstummbillig 5y agoThink of it as what it might sound like to a Christian if you called Jesus a "well known" religious figure.
- skohan 5y agoAs well as being a carpenter
- psyc 5y agoFather of the First Person Shooter and Patron Saint of Low Latency
- TchoBeer 5y agoYou can say "Creator of Doom and Quake" and/or "Founder of ID software"
- matmatmatmat 5y agoThey're very underground, you've probably never heard of them.
- creddit 5y agoAre those not games he developed?
- ctvo 5y agoJohn is one of the great engineering minds of our generation. Don’t forget Oculus.
- neartheplain 5y agoHe was years ahead of the curve [0] on mobile-first VR. By that I don't mean "stick a phone in Google Carboad," but truly self-contained and portable VR built on mobile chipsets. The success of the Quest and Quest 2 is proof of that, especially in the context of years of slow PC-only VR user growth. [0] https://venturebeat.com/2016/10/07/oculus-john-carmack-argues-that-mobile-vr-is-good-enough-to-deliver-a-killer-app/ https://venturebeat.com/2016/10/07/oculus-john-carmack-argue...
- beebeepka 5y agoThanks for sharing these obscure facts with us, man. I guess it does not harm. At the very least you made a lot of people giggle In any case, it's funny he's still using the I'd handle on twitter. Whatever happened to that lawsuit Finally somewhat on topic: I really thought they had a chance when armadillo won that NASA moonlander prize.
- avmich 5y ago> I really thought they had a chance when armadillo won that NASA moonlander prize. Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. I'd really wish John would put fingers to the keyboard and write the history of Armadillo Aerospace. From buying a peroxide engine from Juan Lozano (?) to decision not to continue, even with that grand CNC behemoth as a birthday gift.
- bane 5y agoIIR, Carmack spent a lot of his own money on Armadillo Aerospace and most of the people who worked on it were volunteers. They had many ideas including custom designed rocket engines and self contained composable pieces that could be built into large systems. It was very up Musk's "first principles" alley, but wildly underestimated the capital needed to be successful.
- Thaxll 5y agoWho doesn't know Carmack on HN?
- jstx1 5y agoOther people don't know all the things you do and vice versa. I would bet that less than half of the monthly active users on HN know who John Carmack is.
- gpm 5y agoAnd I'd bet that half of those that do know who John Carmack is don't know he spent awhile building rockets, it's not exactly what he is known for.
- moralestapia 5y agoI concur, I know about Carmack since I started coding games 15 or so years ago, we've even met in person. Yet, somehow, I didn't knew about Armadillo until this thread. Wow.
- jimbob45 5y agoWhat is China speed? Are the Chinese known for fast manufacturing?
- nos4A2 5y agohttps://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-s-coronavirus-hospital-built-10-days-opens-its-doors-n1128531 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-s-coronavirus-hospi... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-20/beijing-replaces-a-huge-highway-overpass-in-only-43-hours https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-20/beijing-r...
- xvf22 5y agoI mean, they built the world's largest high speed rail network pretty damn quickly.
- cdstyh 5y agoThat had always been the advantage of communism and dictatorships. When something needs to be done, you can just force people to do it.
- DashAnimal 5y agoWho was forced to work on the high speed rail? Do you have a source?
- neartheplain 5y agoMaybe GP meant forced in the sense of giving right-of-way, which is arguably the biggest impediment to long distance rail construction. As of this January, California's High Speed Rail project still did not have all necessary right-of-ways [0]. [0] https://www.city-journal.org/high-costs-construction-delays-plague-ca-high-speed-rail https://www.city-journal.org/high-costs-construction-delays-...
- yokoprime 5y agoYes
- 29athrowaway 5y agoSpaceX will now be renamed Union Aerospace Corporation (like in Doom).
- dyingkneepad 5y agoSomebody call Dwayne Johnson, now!
- yann2 5y agoThere are no aerospace factories that aren't impressive. Like termite nests, whether they are builing anything useful or not is another matter.
- seriousquestion 5y agoYou think John Carmack, a legendary engineer who had his own aerospace company and has likely toured others, is wrong that it's extremely impressive? Which would be relative to others.
- quest88 5y agoThe commenter is not questioning the impressiveness of the factory.
- datameta 5y agoThe commenter was making the assertion that Starbase is not exceptionally unique or an advanced outlier in its impressiveness.
- regulation_d 5y agoULA might be inefficient and seems likely to struggle to compete with SpaceX, but Destin Sandlin's (Smarter Every Day) tour of their factory is pretty freakin sweet.
- modeless 5y agoHe must be tempted to join. I think there are few places in the world where one could make a bigger impact as an engineer. He already has experience in rocketry. He's located in Texas. And I bet he'd be interested in the stuff Tesla's doing with AI too.
- wolrah 5y agoIn a previous twitter thread linked from the post here Elon mentions having tried many times to get John to join.
- sillysaurusx 5y agoTempted, perhaps, but not enough to join. Carmack's working on AGI, and he's committed to a decade-long time horizon. The impact of AGI is far greater than rockets, too.
- modeless 5y agoElon is working on AI too, and Dojo is one of the most exciting things in the field if you ask me. Carmack has always been good at leveraging hardware to do amazing things on the graphics side, and AI hardware is not so dissimilar to graphics hardware.
- sillysaurusx 5y agoElon is working on ML, not AGI. Carmack is working on artificial general intelligence. As far as I know, that's well outside of anything Elon is doing.
- modeless 5y agoI mean, Elon just announced that they're building a literal android that is supposed to take verbal directions and perform everyday tasks for you. If that's not AGI, I don't know what is. It may not be very likely to happen anytime soon, but the ambition is there at least. If you haven't watched the Tesla AI presentation, I highly recommend it. The dancer in a spandex robot suit is getting all the headlines but the technical presentations are the real deal. Karpathy in particular is an excellent technical presenter and he didn't hold back.
- ctvo 5y agoIf you sold Carmack, you sold me. I have my opinions on Tesla as a company, but have always been impressed with SpaceX. Godspeed.
- GuB-42 5y agoCarmack has been sold by SpaceX right from the start. Musk and Carmack are both rocket nuts. Carmack ran a rocket company: Armadillo Aerospace, mostly as a hobby. From engineer to engineer, Carmack has a lot of respect for Musk, and Musk tried to offer Carmack a job at SpaceX, as in "stop playing with your toys, we have serious rockets here".
- __m 5y agoMusk isn't an engineer
- GuB-42 5y agoNeither Elon Musk nor John Carmack are engineers, certainly not rocket engineers. Musk is a businessman, Carmack is a programmer. Both are world class in their respective fields. But they are also pretty good at roleplaying engineers. I suggest watching the latest Tim Dodd videos when he tours Starbase with Elon Musk and you'll see Musk engineer character. No nonsense here, no Mars colonies or hyperloops, just the practical considerations of rocket building. As for John Carmack, my preferred example is that short discussion with Elon Musk on Twitter. https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/536277962803650562 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/536277962803650562
- wil421 5y agoI concur and I’m very vocal about the vapor ware that Tesla spews from time to time. SpaceX has delivered and I watched in complete awe when two rockets touched down near simultaneously a year or so ago. I still think the whole passenger part of spacex might be a pipe dream but who knows.
- Diederich 5y ago
- losvedir 5y agoOoh, this is a fun crossover episode.
- kulix425 5y agoChina speed?
- temptemptemp111 5y agoHow retarded do you have to be to believe anyone has gone to space in a costume designed by Hollywood... Going from very hot to very cold in a container whose materials can't shrink or grow 1mm in a supposed infinite near-vacuum. Evil comedy gold.
- nintendo1889 5y agoIt's funny that the Tesla engineers are sharing data with him, since they are suing repair shops that repair Teslas. Time for class action lawsuit, methinks.
- alfiedotwtf 5y agoSaved you a click: It's a photo of 100x developers with Elon
- goodcjw2 5y agoWow Tony Stark and Cap America finally meet IRL!
- DrOctagon 5y agoJohn is going to Mars. Why?, you ask...
- sxp 5y agoThe two previous tweets that triggered this are also interesting: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1423053681520414724 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1423053681520414724 > A troll was trying to get a rise out of me yesterday, suggesting that I should somehow feel bad about Elon's success after my failed aerospace venture. I can't overstate how alien that thought is to me -- my joy at these things being built is deep. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1423162437034037248 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1423162437034037248 > It would be an honor to have you visit Starbase That's an amazing way to respond to a troll.
- ChrisArchitect 5y agoIt stinks like rotten meat, but looks like the lost Deimos base. Looks like you're stuck on the shores of Hell. The only way out is through.