John Carmack Joins Oculus as CTO

We have incredible news to share with the community: legendary game programmer John Carmack will be officially joining the Oculus team as our new Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

John is one of the brightest minds of our generation -- pioneer, visionary, and industry legend. There are very few people in the world that can contribute to the Oculus Rift and the future of virtual reality like John can.

John put together a short note for the Oculus community:

“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!”

If you’re unfamiliar with John’s background, John co-founded id Software, served as lead programmer on Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and the Quake series, and is one of the pioneers of 3D graphics. When John’s not working on revolutionizing video games or computer graphics, he can be found coding at Armadillo Aerospace.

If you’ve been following Oculus since the launch of the Kickstarter campaign (or before that on MTBS3D), you know that John has been a part of the project and a true believer in the future of virtual reality since the beginning. He was the first developer to actually integrate the Rift into a game, back when the hardware was just a hand-held prototype without an SDK.

QuakeCon 2012 Panel - Virtual Insanity

Watch the Video

Palmer, Michael Abrash (Valve), and John discuss virtual reality at QuakeCon 2012.

John will be working from the new Oculus Dallas office that we’re opening soon. We’re looking for a few key hires to help us in Dallas, so if you’re interested, check out the

Oculus Careers page.

Please join us in welcoming John to the Oculus family! You can follow John at @ID_AA_Carmack on Twitter.

Happy anniversary to our Kickstarter backers! We've come a long a way in 1 year, and we can't wait to show you where we're headed next. This is just the beginning.

-- Palmer, John and the Oculus team

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

Oculus Rift just become much more awesome XD

This thread is better; I'm choosing this one.

It seems kind of weird at first, but based on a lot of the news that has come out about Id recently and how they're a rudderless ship that Bethesda is desperately trying to control, it makes a lot of sense that Carmack, who hasn't cared about video games in a long time, would go someplace accommodating to with his programming prowess.

@iamjohn: Yeah he does something like that since years so it will have for sure a huge impact on the device.

And sorry about the 2nd thread but I did not see it when I created it^^

えええええ？？？？？？？？？Did not see this coming... This seems like a huge gamble. He talked about Valve doing work on VR headsets.. what if they steal his lunch?

Actually, I guess when you're John Carmack, this isn't much of a gamble. The guy could get work almost anywhere he wants. I just wonder if Occulus will be the vanguards in this arena or if someone with more funding comes along and doesn't buy them out, but crushes them instead..

2.0 MAXIMUM UPDATE. Turns out John isn't leaving id so this is only half as surprising now. Still, great GET for Occulus.

Doom 4 expected 2055

So wait, where does it say that he is leaving Id? Is he leaving Id? Maybe I misunderstood the thread title.

*Scanners Exploding Head.gif*

I sure didn't see this coming. I'm not sure if it says more about the potential of Occulus than it does the current state of id, but given Carmack's interests, it seems like a good fit for all involved. (Except id.)

Holy shit, That is amazing for Oculus.

@darji: He has not left id: Linky.

Ahh ok - see I didn't notice this is a Darji thread so it's basically a copy-paste and then Darji adds factual inaccuracies and exaggerations on his own.

I was so disappointed by Rage. So disappointed in John Carmack. I think he'll apply his potential for great things with Oculus, he sure seems interested in fiddling with 3d goggles in general.

tss^^

It was stated so in the Eurogamer article but they had 3 updates on that already so it is not may fault but Eurogamer's^^

Also he is now working Fulltime at Oculus and just has ties to ID.

The Penny Arcade Report has been able to clarify that Carmack begins working full time for Oculus today, but still has “ties” to id Software, according to Oculus PR. His role in the company he co-founded, if any, is unknown at this point. We'll be following up to see what we can find out about his relationship to the company.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/john-carmack-becomes-the-cto-of-oculus-vr-retains-ties-to-id-software

That is AMAZING !

John Carmack seems to be in a position where he can pretty much do whatever he wants to. So if he only wants to keep loose ties at id in case something interesting happens there, he can. And the Oculus Rift seems like something that he's far more interested in than Doom 4 and, frankly, Doom 4 might see a hell of a lot more progress if Carmack is off doing something else instead of tweaking the engine to make it perfect.

For the record, I liked Rage a lot. The story sucked. The world was only half as interesting as it should have been. But the shooting was excellent and the environments were pretty and the performance was pretty damn solid. The PC issues were eventually patched out, too.

The original version did say he was leaving id. Eurogamer is being sneaky and updating the article without noting where the updates were applied

So it's Oculus, then id, then Armadillo in order of importance. Not sure that id are going to be around in a meaningful form for too much longer, so I'm glad that Carmack has a new gig already.

This is amazing news, but I still believe that in a few years from now, that headset of doom is gonna cause brain cancer and sight loss and people are gonna get sued by people who got broken. God forbid, but it's what I think.

I'm not gonna put that thing on my eyes but I'm happy for those who will, Carmack is amazing.

Nice, the Oculus Rift has been one of the nicer surprises in the gaming world in recent memory.