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I got obsessed with his ideas after reading the Quake 3 source code. So many novel ideas, flawlessly executed, highly optimized, yet easy to understand and easy

I got obsessed with his ideas after reading the Quake 3 source code. So many novel ideas, flawlessly executed, highly optimized, yet easy to understand and easy to modify and debug. My personal impression is that John Carmack has the ability to organize concepts in a way that few people can. So even if he's pretty clueless about the topic now, I would expect him to reduce some maths papers to their essence in a way that nobody else did. I mean also for Oculus, reprojection in a pixel shader seems like an obvious and easy solution in hindsight. But nobody had tried that before he did. Plenty of people (myself included) knew the math. But we all missed its application to the issue at hand.

vanjajaja1 4y ago
Can you elaborate on 'reprojection in a pixel shader'? What did he do, what was the insight etc
- Kuinox 4y ago
  I think they are talking about asynchronous reprojection that is extensively used in VR. Here a demo on a 2D game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvFyOFacljg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvFyOFacljg He exposed the concept in this post: https://web.archive.org/web/20140719085135/http://www.altdev.co/2013/02/22/latency-mitigation-strategies/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140719085135/http://www.altdev... But it was not named asynchronous projection back then.
foldr 4y ago
He’s been going on about AI for at least a couple of years now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21530860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21530860 It’s certainly possible that he will have a novel idea, but I haven’t seen anything come out of it yet. I’m sure Carmack’s mathematical ability exceeds that of the average game developer (and certainly my own), but the AI field isn’t short of math whizzes.
- b112 4y ago
  He’s been going on about AI for at least a couple of years now: https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ A whole couple of years, eh? Wow, this AGI thing is taking forever!
  - foldr 4y ago
    I'm just saying there's been no visible indication of progress. You're obviously free to believe that something will come of it over a longer time period. It also seems that we can add at least another year based on this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21531255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21531255
- Jensson 4y ago
  Most math wizzes only learn to apply known methods, they don't invent new methods. The AI fields isn't full of people who are creative enough to invent new math methods instead of just applying methods they learned in school.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    I disagree. I know of plenty of people in the AI field that might as well be mathematicians.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      Most mathematicians aren't creative enough to invent new math methods either, they mostly just apply things they learned in school to find new results. Universities aren't good at finding nor nurturing creative individuals.
      - candiodari 4y ago
        There are plenty of new scientific results that in both Math and Machine Learning that are essentially 6 months/a few years/a few decades of hard work away from discovery. As a professor once told me: IF you're lucky, after 10 years in academia, you get to be creative and come up with 4-5 ideas once every 5 years or so (when coming up with the suggested list of research for new phd students to do). Then you get to be devastated when no-one picks up any of your more creative ideas, and everyone picks the 10 non-creative ideas on the list because they don't want to risk their phd.

vanjajaja1 4y ago

Can you elaborate on 'reprojection in a pixel shader'? What did he do, what was the insight etc

Kuinox 4y ago
I think they are talking about asynchronous reprojection that is extensively used in VR. Here a demo on a 2D game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvFyOFacljg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvFyOFacljg He exposed the concept in this post: https://web.archive.org/web/20140719085135/http://www.altdev.co/2013/02/22/latency-mitigation-strategies/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140719085135/http://www.altdev... But it was not named asynchronous projection back then.

foldr 4y ago

He’s been going on about AI for at least a couple of years now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21530860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21530860 It’s certainly possible that he will have a novel idea, but I haven’t seen anything come out of it yet. I’m sure Carmack’s mathematical ability exceeds that of the average game developer (and certainly my own), but the AI field isn’t short of math whizzes.

b112 4y ago
He’s been going on about AI for at least a couple of years now: https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ A whole couple of years, eh? Wow, this AGI thing is taking forever!
- foldr 4y ago
  I'm just saying there's been no visible indication of progress. You're obviously free to believe that something will come of it over a longer time period. It also seems that we can add at least another year based on this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21531255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21531255
Jensson 4y ago
Most math wizzes only learn to apply known methods, they don't invent new methods. The AI fields isn't full of people who are creative enough to invent new math methods instead of just applying methods they learned in school.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  I disagree. I know of plenty of people in the AI field that might as well be mathematicians.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    Most mathematicians aren't creative enough to invent new math methods either, they mostly just apply things they learned in school to find new results. Universities aren't good at finding nor nurturing creative individuals.
    - candiodari 4y ago
      There are plenty of new scientific results that in both Math and Machine Learning that are essentially 6 months/a few years/a few decades of hard work away from discovery. As a professor once told me: IF you're lucky, after 10 years in academia, you get to be creative and come up with 4-5 ideas once every 5 years or so (when coming up with the suggested list of research for new phd students to do). Then you get to be devastated when no-one picks up any of your more creative ideas, and everyone picks the 10 non-creative ideas on the list because they don't want to risk their phd.