John Carmack on the Metaverse: "Yeah, this sucks"

That is not a real quote, obviously, but it's pretty hilarious how he can just show up and dunk on everything Facebook is doing - on a Facebook platform.

Last year, former Oculus CTO (and current Meta "executive advisor") John Carmack threw down the gauntlet for Meta's near-term metaverse plans. By the 2022 Meta Connect conference, Carmack said last October, he hoped he'd be in his headset, "walking around the [virtual] halls or walking around the stage as my avatar in front of thousands of people getting the feed across multiple platforms."

Carmack's vision didn't come to pass Tuesday, as a jerky and awkward Carmack avatar gave one of his signature, hour-long unscripted talks amid a deserted VR space, broadcast out as plain old 2D video on Facebook.

"Last year I said that I'd be disappointed if we weren't having Connect in Horizon this year," Carmack said by way of introduction. "This here, this isn't really what I meant. Me being an avatar on-screen on a video for you is basically the same thing as [just] being on a video."

Tell us what you really think John!

Throughout his talk, Carmack seemed to reserve the bulk of his grumpiness for one core area of concern: "The basic usability of Quest really does need to get better."

For instance, you currently either need to leave your Quest 2 on and plugged in to download frequent OS and app updates, or sit through a lengthy "update hell" almost every time you pick up the headset. That leads to a lot of VR sessions that are "aborted in frustration," Carmack said (though he hoped that the Quest Pro charging dock could help with this problem in aggregate).

Carmack shared word of internal posts from Meta employees bemoaning a 20-minute, multi-reboot process to get an old headset ready for the Connect presentation that day. He also talked about tales of Quest owners who don't even get their headsets out to show off to houseguests because of the anticipated hassle of setting everything up for a demo.

And once a headset is up and running, Carmack complained about how slow and awkward it is to connect to other people in Meta's metaverse. "Our app startup times are slow, our transitions are glitchy," he said, bluntly. "We need to make it a whole lot better... much, much faster to get into."

Well I'm going to go all-in on this exciting new technology!

Megatextures > Metaverse

I bought a Vive not long after release. The games were really interesting, but I could never get myself to spend a crazy amount of time using it. Some of the magic falls off pretty quick once you start seeing and understanding the limitations. One look at that leg video and you can tell it's nonsense if you have even a small amount of that familiarity.

@dwerkmd: It's interesting how critical analysis leads to logical conclusions in industries that are WEIRDLY held to no account for flat-out lying to end users and consumers.

Anytime a game's hype material brags about the SIZE of a game's world, and not the scope nor the content, it is a gargantuan red flag for me. The moment "No Man's Sky"'s team started talking number of planets, and not content of planets, I lost all interest in the game, for instance.

At this point Meta's spending billions to build the Destiny hub, I'm not sure how making a virtual app store helps VR that much.

Well, John Carmack has a history of dunking on stuff. But, I think his fans think is a a bit more clever (and his opinion should matter a bit more) that even he thinks. John is blunt. His opinions are blunt and that is just the way he is; we should not want him to change. But, he is not always the smartest guy in the room about everything.

John Carmack succeed most in places where nobody else is trying. If the competition is weak John is smart enough to surpass everyone else easily because he is frickin' smart. But, when he pitted his aerospace company against another prepared to work aerospace company; he did not stand out - he flopped. He's excels mostly if his completion is inferior and caught off guard, and yet his fan don't see it. For them if John said ist ist must be true and if John doesn't like something they all agree they don't like it either.

The entire concept is pointless. I can't imagine this product not failing.

Thanks for posting this Rorie, really interesting video that went under my radar. Carmacks criticism is why people pay attention when he gets excited\praises certain technologies. Wish more tech companies had folks this honest/blunt.

Really wish to be the fly in the room when someone who has dedicated years and years of his life to VR like Carmack discusses the Quest with anyone else at Facebook/Meta.

Quest and Meta just don't have clear visions. Everything is a concept and all their concepts are selling me...VR chat? PS Home?

At least Carmack is thinking about usability issues and getting more people into headsets more routinely.

@dooz said:

Horizon? In its current form, sure. It's just bad VR chat. Everything else?

Nah. Varjo makes enterprise VR headsets that are $8000 (with $2000 annual subscription services). Hololense costs much more than this. Those products aren't failing in the sectors they're marketing them in. And while Facebook's social VR push is very bad, social VR itself is not and is growing in popularity.

VR and AR will have a huge place going forward in our relationship with technology. We're all just old men yelling at clouds. And Quest definitely hasn't failed Oculus.

I might import a Pico 4. I want a Quest Pro (a lot) but $1500 is too rich for my blood.

for this to be true, there must be a problem that VR is solving. If not, then it will remain a gimmick like light guns or motion controls. thus far, the pitches that are coming out are of a solution that is still searching for the problem and until that changes, VR and AR are not going anywhere

VR already has applications for entertainment and also in simulation, design and research environments. People actually do buy those $8000 Varjo headsets. I don't think they're really searching for problems to solve. The problem to solve is full-dive. And AR? Something as simple as this has real potential once the pixel per degree gets to "retina" levels:

https://twitter.com/MKBHD/status/1580917421757587456

I understand your skepticism. Personally I'm (sorta) glad Meta has an enterprise headset. They're generally trying to solve problems they can't in consumer headsets because of price, and that tech trickles down to consumer HMDs. It's been one of the things driving progress for VR.

the problem is that what you've got there is an expensive and complicated multi monitor setup, a problem we already have solved with superior existing technology.

Thats what VR is looking for its problem means- VR needs to do something natively that other things can't do cheaper or better. there is not a single proposed use case for VR or AR that is technically plausible and addresses an issue that does not have an existing solution. until such time as there is, it will remain an expensive toy for enthusiasts, or a rock band esque item that sits in a closet until it comes out on holidays to act as a gimick gadget

I don't know. Being able to throw a light HMD and a laptop in your bag and carry around a full work environment has appeal to me, and I doubt I'm the only one. And that's just one simple solution to a very real problem. Yes, you can have three permanent monitors. No, that's not ideal for every deployment of a monitor. I don't think that's a huge reach.

This stuff isn't ready for everyone. I don't think it's a gimmick, but I think it's reasonable to remain unconvinced.

I remember back in 2014 when John was defending Oculus' sale to Facebook and saying it was one of the best companies that could've bought Oculus. Lol, thanks John.

@bogard: Same. As a software dev, I'd love to work in VR/AR. It's just the Quest 2 sucks for that stuff. It's uncomfortable after an hour. Its passthrough camera is terrible. And the resolution needs upping.

John Carmack scripts you.

@monkeyking1969: I think that's more down to John being terrible at man management. He needs a charismatic boss guy by his side. On his own, he's pretty grim to work under. At least that's how it seemed when recounting his days at id.

Meta have invested $15 billion into VR with nearly $3 billion in the last quarter alone, they're literally throwing money away I can't really think who else would be a better patron for such unproven tech.

In the book "Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture" everyone at id sounded like they were difficult. However, what would you expected from a bunch of 20-somethings making games about shooting alien demons with shotguns. In the book John Ramiro, John Carmack, and American McGee all sounded like people it would be insufferable to work with day-to-day.