E3 2012: John Carmack Interview

Utterly fascinating. A genius of a man. I love how Brad just sits there and lets him speak, but of course, who could blame him. When John Carmack speaks, you listen.

@nrh79 said:

@Grimluck343 said:

What an amazing interview. Mr. Carmack is a true legend in the industry, glad to see him work on so many cool projects.

It wasn't really an interview TBH, and I'm OK with that. Man, can he talk!

To be fair, the whole point of an interview is to get answers from someone, and, hey, Carmack just so happens to give up all the answers to all the questions you might have asked without you ever asking them. That's just an interview with a fantastic guest. ;)

@Paul_Tillich said:

How old is Carmack? Boy genius?

He's gotta be in his 40's by now.

@demonbear said:

I love how he, very sincerely think he can educate different manufacturers to make this thing happen

That stood out to me too. A frustration that he has with things moving so slowly because people aren't as clever or unbound to think about problems like him so he feels like he has to single-handedly step in to hurry everything up. Must be interesting to have his perspective on life.

do we really need futurama music over this

Carmack is one of those people I could listen to all day, no matter what they talked about :)

Awesome interview, thanks a lot!

John Carmack's soundtrack is Futurama

Why is the focus on the background instead of Carmack?

That man is inspiring.

Did you ever have a moment where you walk into a room full of people and realize that you're the smartest person in that room? Yeah, Mr. Carmack has that experience every single time he walks into a room.

FUCK MILLISECONDS! Always up in your grill ruining shit!

The best part of this is the way Brad says "right, yeah", while Carmack casually throws out all the latency figures as if that stuff was common knowledge.

That music is WAAAAY too loud, can barely hear what's being said!

Truly an inspiration to witness carmack and the passion he has.

Would love to see a version of this unrestrained by time where Carmack would just get to go all out with everything he had to say because it seemed like he could go on for even longer.

Dat Face.

Classic.

Put a little bit of Carmack on there.

I could listen to John Carmack for days.

I love that he took into account neck and head movement in order to give the viewing angles a more realistic feel.

Also, I'm pretty sure Brad only asked the one question at the start and John just took off for the full 17 minutes. edit--- Brad asked 3 questions total. haha.

@LordLOC said:

@Paul_Tillich said:

How old is Carmack? Boy genius?

He's gotta be in his 40's by now.

He's 41.

Awesome interview....

Wow, Carmack knows his stuff. Also, who dares tell Carmack to hurry it along at around 15 minutes in?

I want Carmack to take Shoemaker on as his pupil.

Also, I seriously CANNOT get enough of that fake Futurama theme.

Carmack is strangely calming. I love that someone in this world is thinking at a level beyond everyone else about how to make an FPS better.

Let's hope that Carmack sets his mind to world hunger next.

It really is crazy how his mind works where he is already thinking about the next question you're going to ask as he's answering one and then just keeps rolling with all kinds of super insightful information.

Easily one of the most interesting people i have ever heard speak. Very intelligent.

The greatest nerd ever, some day we'll tell our children that we walked the same earth of John Carmack

God Mode on.

Obviously John has watched Breaking Brad.

John Carmack is a genius and I like the way he is getting these industries to work together, and in the end we will have some awesome product that he is going to make more affordable, and better than it ever was before. The man has been a definite contribution to the gaming world, and I'm sure with what he is working with here, it could be a major contribution to other fields.

I would love to listen to the man speak about these things goals/goggles more, or somehow help him accomplish them. I'm sure working with him is a highly rewarding experience, because he certainly has the brain power and vision to make them happen. You just have to be willing to listen to him talk for awhile and understanding of what he is saying I'm guessing. :)

I'd never heard Carmack speak before. Once I got past the... unique tone of his voice I was entranced. WHO WAVED THEIR HAND?! WHY DID YOU STOP HIM?!

Brain candy! :)

But seriously, please get rid of the background music.

Yeah!

The most exciting thing about John Carmack interviews or keynotes IMHO is, he talks to you in a way you can understand. It's like your high school teacher, reminding you of things, you have learned in the past, but chose to forget. And then, there is his pure hacker soul - being the real MacGyver - listening to him, makes people excited about learning about math, physics, code and tech...

Maybe the most impressive thing about this is how comparatively easy it is to follow given the complexity of the subject and my utter lack of experience with the technological background. Such eloquence and talent to explain a large context reasonably simple is very rare. Excellent stuff.

I'm not sure if I understood half of what Cormack had to say, but I still love hearing him in interviews like this because intellect like that is just impressive to watch.

This is also really cool to see more early fragments of virtual reality

Music reminds me of Futurama.

Oh my science! Hah, I bet Brad is like, "wtf is he saying?"

Brad said exactly what I was thinking... This would work on a flight simulator, driving simulator, etc.. But, in a FPS game you can't be moving the camera by your thumbstick and by the tracker IR at the same time.. It just wont work. Anyone who used this would get the least kills on the server.

Hilarious. How amazing would it be to just open any random machine and just go "Oh that's how it works".

Oh man, what an amazing guy; it's so satisfying listening to a really erudite guy like that talk about things he's obviously passionate about.

Carmack is a true wizard.

The background music in this video is too loud and too obnoxious.

That was by far the most interesting interview I've seen from E3. John Carmack is brilliant.

This thing would be great for games that is all about atmosFEAR.

Something like Amnesia or Condemned

@gaminginpublic said:

Brad said exactly what I was thinking... This would work on a flight simulator, driving simulator, etc.. But, in a FPS game you can't be moving the camera by your thumbstick and by the tracker IR at the same time.. It just wont work. Anyone who used this would get the least kills on the server.

Well you wouldn't use it for competitive gaming. But for a single player game, you aren't going to get any closer to wearing a visor like Samus or Master Chief, and for single player, this could be a great tool for immersion.

watching Carmack's keynote at last QuakeCon made me come back to this video :)

still awesome ;)

It's cool for someone to do something great like this and then say that he can't wait for the real change to come through other people messing with his stuff on their own.

I've been using my DK2 all weekend. Cool to see how much better it is than this.

Soon.

Soon.