
Keynote by John Carmack at Oculus Connect 2014 [video] - ivank
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqzpAbK9qFk
======
iamshs
I am only 10 minutes into this talk, but John is one awesome speaker. No PR
talk at all, he is speaking his mind freely and in fact started with
shortcomings of the product. The segue between different sections is so
smooth. I do not have background in VR, but he explains things so smoothly. He
is just freely talking about supply chain, and what the product constitutes.
And he has been standing in the same spot. What a genuine speaker. Also, looks
like Facebook's influence has been minimal. There is just no iota of bullshit
in him. I like him already. My first John Carmack video, and I am already
hooked. Now onto watching the full video.

~~~
ramidarigaz
If you liked his talk, definitely check out his QuakeCon keynotes and his talk
about physically based lighting.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-
iVFxgFWk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uooh0Y9fC_M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uooh0Y9fC_M)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyUgHPs86XM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyUgHPs86XM)

~~~
Sammi
I've watched the one on lighting twice, just cause it blew my mind so much. I
finally (think I) understand light.

~~~
DonHopkins
When I first read that, I thought "lighting" was some kind of mind altering
drug. It is, if you do it right! ;)

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Laremere
I love it when John Carmack talks, because he doesn't do marketing speak, and
he doesn't dumb down his content. It's just a brain dump of technical info
until they (almost literally) kick him off the stage.

~~~
naiyt
I also love his enthusiasm for whatever he's talking about. Every time I
listen to him I suddenly feel motivated to go and write a bunch of code.

------
gnarbarian
Carmack has been a hero of mine since the mid 90s. He was also the inspiration
for me to go into computer science. Always a pleasure to listen to such a
technically dense talk on the cutting edge of a subject dear to me. I highly
recommend his quake-con keynotes as well for those of you who like this video.

------
webwielder
Perhaps even more impressive than Carmack's technical chops is his ability to
stand in a single spot for hours on end.

~~~
morkfromork
He moves but, is too fast for the camera speed.

~~~
DonHopkins
He takes bathroom breaks during vertical refresh.

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jayavanth
Michael Abrash's keynote is worth checking out!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS4yEyt5Qes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS4yEyt5Qes)

~~~
canadev
Thanks for the link. I'll probably end up watching this. I watched the Carmack
talk as well.

Small note, but some things that kind of annoy me:

1\. Audio sync issues -- the mouths and the words don't line up. I may just
download the video and use the Audio Delay tool in VLC to watch it.

2\. Start time of the talk: in this video you've just linked, the presentation
doesn't even begin till like 6 mins in. Somewhat similar issue on the original
video...

EDIT: Download link for the Abrash video:
[http://www.clipconverter.cc/download/pwvblTMb/123146223/](http://www.clipconverter.cc/download/pwvblTMb/123146223/)

Download link for the Carmack video:
[http://www.clipconverter.cc/download/ecJvSoeC/123169959/](http://www.clipconverter.cc/download/ecJvSoeC/123169959/)

EDIT: Here's the "Bar/Far" video clip that Abrash showed, it was badly out of
sync for me when I watched the presentation, but you can see it here:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefFfvriAwQ#t=64](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefFfvriAwQ#t=64)

And here's the side-by-side:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefFfvriAwQ#t=149](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefFfvriAwQ#t=149)

Pretty amazing.

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asadlionpk
Just finished watching, I am impressed at how low-level/technical he can get
without boring or confusing the audience.

I have some experience with technical speaking and its very hard to make a
technical point without dumbing it down for the audience.

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lucasgw
I was in the room - he is a truly dynamic speaker and obviously a super-
intelligent guy. I think he went off the rails a bit with the suggestion of
interlacing as a potential solution. That makes little sense to me. It's, at
best, a short-term solution once you get fast enough displays and rendering.
(And as an old-time video guy... just... god, please... no...)

~~~
demallien
I feel you in the pain of dealing with interlacing, but Carmack was envisaging
a more flexible solution than plain two up interlacing. In particular his
solution also made HDR imaging possible, which sounds like a worthwhile win to
compensate for the pain of interlacing.

~~~
fezz
Patents for interlaced HDR techniques are out there for the capture chain and
probably for the display side also. I think it's premature to take everything
Carmack suggests as solutions as gospel as to how things will end up. Speaking
from alot of experience in straddling software and cutting edge hardware
development, solutions that make sense on one side often come out differently
on the other side. And sometimes the best solution is biting the bullet and
doing it right without the hacks and then optimizing the cost down.

------
asciimo
While listening to all of the mitigation strategies that Carmack proposed for
the technological challenges, I wondered if you could hack the user. What
about drugs? Is there something that can reduce our sensitivity to low-
frequency displays and yaw lag? At the very least, motion sickness drugs?

~~~
Synaesthesia
I'm sure there is, anti-emetic medication like Valoid really helps with
nausea, and Cannabis can alleviate nausea and discomfort tremendously. But
ideally we want to solve these problems in hardware, rather than wetware of
course.

------
riffraff
Sorry for the somewhat lame question, but is he always that still?

I'm 10 minutes in and I don't think he moved his feet once, and his right hand
just a couple times.

It feels very weird for me to watch and I just noticed it now, is there
something wrong with me?

~~~
ufo
Yes, its usually like that. He might sit down after a couple of hours though.

------
Jacky800
John Carmack is great technical speaker. His interesting thoughts flows in a
continuous stream and as a listener its almost impossible to get distracted.

I wish Carmack does an interview like the one in "Coders at work" format where
we can get some insight on

How he approaches debugging,

what tools he uses apart from visual studio.

How does he approaches already existing large code base?

What is the optimal duration to code without interruption.

What techniques does he use to get in to flow state e.t.c..

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walterbell
Nice use of keynote to directly present requirements to engineers throughout
the display supply chain, especially in large companies like Samsung.

------
vertis
This keynote was by far the highlight of the entire conference for me

Second were the amazing demos on the Crescent Bay prototype

------
Kenji
Nothing Carmack does is ever boring. This man is a huge inspiration for me.

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Vanayad
Can anyone tl;dr the new stuff in this version of the oculus prototype ?

~~~
modeless
Lighter, higher resolution, higher frame rate, better lenses, larger tracking
volume, 360 degree tracking, and built-in headphones. The resolution and frame
rate are likely close if not identical to what the first consumer Oculus
headset will have next year.

~~~
azernik
Not just built-in headphones, but also built-in positional audio APIs
(possibly with hardware acceleration?)

------
bsaul
Anyone's got a link to the slidedeck ?

~~~
Strom
There are no slides, as per usual for Carmack talks.

------
justifier
it becomes its own form of marketing speech, carmack was the reason i got
involved: financially, temporally, and mentally; and i think the organisation
understands this as common for a number of people.. especially 'developers'

the oculus is digital stereoscopy

which is hard with simple stationary fixed objects(i), but combine it with
inferred spherical screen encapsulation and it becomes a real challenge,
probably a fun one too

you let carmack wax poetic on his interesting ideas to fix this tech and he
will talk about latency and hertz and i'll listen with bated breath because i
like hearing people talk about solutions to problems

but then i put the headset on and i realise these are hardly the problems
befallen the proposed goal

i want someone to address that piece of a person that is lost when they put
the headset on for the first time, it almost appears physical when you see it
waft out of them

i lost it, my gamer friend who already preemptively developed a defensive
cyncism to the tech lost it, the eleven year old i introduce hacking to lost
it, and that last one was probably the most signifigant for me to see

i had been using the object sitting on top of my bookshelf as an incentivising
mechanism: 'finish your project and i'll let you use the oculus'; last week he
pushed his finished project but i had other obligations the following week so
he had to wait 'two! whole! weeks!' to get to use the oculus

when i picked him up the following week, uncharacteristically early this
time.. we both are lax in our punctuallity but he refused to let me be late
today so he came directly to me fifteen minutes early.. he went on and on
about how he has been 'scared' all day:'scared, but like happy scared'; i
tried to explain to him the concept of anxiety but his mind was hurling itself
around all of what he was about to become witness to

i put the headset on him and he had fun with it, but when he took it off he
became suddenly very pragmatic in his demeanor, he told me he thinks it hurt
him, his head, his eyes, something.. he needed a glass of water, i explained
that that was because instead of being a virtual reality in which he was
transposed to the thing exploits an optical illusion which means your brain is
doing a lot more work than it usually does trying to rectify the
inconsistencies, if you've ever been frustrated by trying to see a sailboat in
a magic eye you know what it feels like to use the oculus

i asked him his opinion:'honestly? ..well, unfortunately a little
dissappointed';

i see my position as creating a safe environment for him to develop his ideas
so naturally i challenged him to explain himself by defending the
technological feat that he was holding in his hand, but the only thing we
could talk about quickly became anything other than what we wanted to talk
about

so we talked about the tech, i started going all carmack on him and we had fun
talking tech but the conversation was clearly avoiding talking about the
'experience' one develops when wearing the headset

i wanted to know what he lost, and asked him to describe the thing he thought
it was going to be, he was unable:'i don't know, just different, like? more
3d`ish'; in fashion i told him to explain himself explicitly stead
superficially:'but what does that mean? what did you think it was going to be?
describe that to me';

'i don't know anymore'

this i understood, but my experience was different, after wearing the headset
i started to dream up better ways to do what i thought they were trying to do
before i put it on, ways to do what i wanted from virtual reality, they are
dreams and some built on the sort of technological feats of dreams but this
was and still is my reaction each time i wear it

so yes john, tell me all about your brilliant ideas for fixing latency issues
because this stuff is fun, but please acknowledge the baseline of this
research is fundamentally flawed as it pertains to the proposed goals

i've stopped calling the oculus virtual reality, the oculus is digital
stereoscopy

.

.

.

. (i) the first thing i did with the oculus was pull up two terminals, cat out
some of my writing, align vertically, then slowly move one terminal into the
field of view of the other eye until the text seemed to stop wonking my brain
and really pop out at me

the experience was profound

so, i threw together a little browser playground with two 117px squares, one
blue and one pink, i aligned them vertically then again slowly moved one into
the field of view of the other eye, and i waited until those two distinct
colors overlaid in my mind as a single purple

herein lies the problem: there was a multi pixel range where my brain would
close the gap manually, out of my control and rather forcibly; it was
impossible for me to find the perfect distance between the two divs, 340pxs
worked but so did plus or minus 4px from 344px, the
perfect'exact`preferred`innate distance was undiscoverable because of the
exception handling in my brain's interpretation of my visual input

.. edit:: gramm`err

~~~
justifier
john,

11:58~ :: resolution issues :: you mention comparing 1080 to 1440 saying 'you
have to look kind of carefully or interact with it for a long time to
determine the difference in quality' those are the exact two things you do
with the screen when using the oculus.. first thing i found myself doing was
counting pixels, because i could, because the screen is on my nose tip, and
interacting with it a long time is physically painful: after a two hour film
my eyes had bags under them but white bags as if my eyes were starved of blood
for that whole time cut off by the goggles pressing to my face; but this is
what i wanted: i wanted a digital workspace! terminals flying around me, above
me below me, stacked in front of me, i want my development marathons to be
done in a virtual space

.

18:00~ :: interlacing scans :: why do the scans have to be left to right? i
like the multi line gap interlacing idea: each individual gap creating its
designated frame; but i wonder if you've considered scanning the lines from
the middle out in both directions.. is this possible? hardware changes? one
upsetting realisation with the oculus was the importance of both neck to skull
mobility as well as eye rotation mobility, if my vision is focused at the
center and blurred in the periphery i need something moving both with my
pupils as well as my skull, but since your tech has yet to offer a way to do
this it could easily exploit its own limitations by just scanning those lines
from middle out as it already assumes i am looking straight ahead at the
screen, also at 33 minutes you talk about the importance of resolution..?

.

23:00~ :: position tracking :: vision purity is a heartbreaking itch.. i've
spent very little time thinking about the issue of position tracking.. i left
the tracker unplugged for a long time in the early days of using the device, i
only really plugged it in in order to assume a position of solidarity with the
project as it is, hopefully only for now, in its entirity.. only thought i've
had is embedded seems necessary.. i'll be looking at a blade of grass and as i
get closer to it, getting down on the ground to really look at and around then
suddenly i will leave the field of view for the tracker and be jarringly
thrown into some default position until i adjust and i'm picked up again and
placed back at my actual position

.

33:00~ :: resolution :: interesting to come back to this later and from an
opposing position.. i think this sort of developmental focus contradiction is
necessary to simultaneously improve multiple aspects of the experience

.

40:00~ :: stereo pano :: this sounds like me arguing with my math teacher in
highschool how calculus is 'just a hack', a practical hack that has giving us
signifigant comforts from the technology it affords, but most assuredly a
hack.. the head tilt problem sounds like an area for fascinating research,
also sounds like a capture problem, the photographer, that when figured will
become a display problem, the stereo display tech.. perhaps you could usurp
the capture solution by messing around with light field cameras like lytro?
and solve the display issues before capture shows you you have them

.

42:00~ :: stereo pano cirque demo :: i like the incorporation of positional
audio, this reminded me of the scene in guardians when rocket is disciplining
a defeated drax:'we've all got dead people'; this was the first scene in a 3d
movie where i felt like the set was built with 3d in mind, the practical
effects seemed to catch up with the digital, shedding their historic bindings
to the theatre, and i was impressed and excited about the future of 3d movies
for the first time

.

48:37 :: benchmarking :: 'i'm sure i could write a benchmark that could win
relative to something else'.. that is the single most hilarious and excellent
sentence in regard to benchmarking that i have ever heard, love it

.

50:00~ :: cardboard :: cardboard is interesting, i read it the first time as a
sort of commentary`derision`joke by googs to bacefook for buying oculus, but
the execution was so well done and thought out that it almost redeemed itself,
and in reality the cardboard makes you appreciate the oculus more.. i think
stereoscopy is innately flawed and with the cardboard you can see the
limitations and shortcomings outright which effectively shows how well the
oculus hides its flaws

.

1:06:00~ :: thermal :: the thermal seems a greater problem for gear than
oculus, why the gear placed a shell around the phone stead some clip in
feature seemed to aggressively deny this as an issue, but hearing how much you
are concerned and interested in thermal issues makes me wonder if samsung's
agreement with oculus has tied you all to their gear interests or what are
your motivating affects? i understand the whole whats good on mobile is great
on`for pc but still..

.

1:10:00~ :: up vectors :: 'breaking what we want to accomplish in vr'.. i'm
sorry i disagree with you on this one, hard coding any elements of the
experience is going to make for a bad user experience, have your interests as
defaults but allow users to use it as they want, i want to lay on my back and
have my virtual up vector orthagonal to my meat space up vector, sometimes,
sometimes we make unreasonable descisions but i want to be able to.. like
laying on my back watching a movie, thankfully the whirligig player allows me
to orient the screen to whatever angle regardless of the positional trackers'
understanding of my virtual orientation

.

1:11:40 :: async time warp :: 'you win arguments by showing an existence
proof', excellent

.

1:22:00~ :: eye slicing :: un chien andalou

.

1:27:00+ :: questions

. 1:35:00~ :: lenses :: i look forward to seeing your non-circular lens
implementation, the idea of rendering more than throwing away the excess is
the optimal way to develop

.

thank you for your time, and effort

.

.. edit :: gramm`err

