
John Carmack's Keynote at Oculus 4 Live Stream [video] - staunch
https://www.facebook.com/oculusvr/videos/vb.270208243080697/1189602884474557/?type=3&theater
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mileycyrusXOXO
I think John Carmack is one of my favorite people to watch present. If you
haven't watched his long rants about using FP in game dev @ QuakeCon a few
years back you should.

It was QuakeCon 2013, although I'm not sure which part:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUxcVzpeFqc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUxcVzpeFqc)

~~~
johansch
Yeah, he is really quite good at this. (I wonder if it came naturally to him,
or if it's just a matter of practicing very regularly for like 20 years?)

I wish he would give Elon Musk some mentoring on how to communicate with a
technical audience. Or just a regular audience, I guess.

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derefr
I'm under the hypothesis that (good) game developers know how to talk to
people (or at least how to present things to people) because part of game
design is thinking about how to manipulate people's emotions into wanting to
(or even being eager to!) face a challenge you've set out for them.

It's similar but not identical to the reasoning for actors and directors to be
good entertainers and interviewers. Those folks constantly think about
manipulating people's emotions in general, but game design is completely
focussed on just manipulating people into excitement or flow states — and that
just so happens to be the emotion you (usually) want people to have in
reaction to a presentation: the feeling of "I'm going to go out— _and buy
their thing_ —and change the world."

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Tarq0n
Carmack is more of a game engine engineer than a game designer, as evidenced
by the lacklustre design of id games after Romero left.

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erikj
Quake 3 Arena is still one of the best multiplayer shooters ever, so I can't
agree with your statement.

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Koshkin
While surely being a marvel of software engineering and level design, it had
nothing in common with Quake I and II. It is not my intent to be critical
here, but QA3 felt like a circus, especially compared with other multiplayer
shooters such as the original Unreal Tournament, which had a wonderful
mysterious atmosphere to it.

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wlesieutre
I was just playing something recently and thought "This feels like an Unreal
Tournament Space Castle." Can't remember what game it was.

UT99 had some fantastic level design. Facing Worlds, Phobos, HyperBlast, Deck
16, Coret, etc.

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mentos
Huge fan of John Carmack!

These quotes from the keynote really stand out to me:

"If you think you've got that new killer app by all means go ahead and work on
it but otherwise you can always spend time improving the existing applications
and those are good muscles to exercise so even if it turns out that it wasn't
the magic app - going through the disciplined work of making it as good as it
can possibly be is whats going to need to be applied when you eventually get
the magical application"

"Embrace the grind. You've all shown that you're bold by starting to work on
an emerging platform that is not mainstream yet but it takes more than just
being bold - you have to actually work really hard and you've got to fill your
products with give a damn, to really care about every aspect of them."

"Success isn't about that one brilliant idea. Its about doing the one thousand
little things right and getting it all done."

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j7ake
Thanks for this I wonder if someone is compiling all of his quotes from other
lectures into a handbook.

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icelancer
Here's a huge archive of them. I shipped it to PrintMe1 and had it spiral
bound for reading.

[http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-
interviews.pdf](http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-interviews.pdf)

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Animats
How much runway does Oculus have left? They're 5 years in.

VR headset unit sales to March, 2017:

\- Sony: 915,000

\- HTC: 420,000

\- Oculus: 243,000

Will Facebook keep pouring money in, or pull the plug?

[1] [https://haptic.al/latest-virtual-reality-headset-sales-so-
fa...](https://haptic.al/latest-virtual-reality-headset-sales-so-
far-9553e42f60b5)

~~~
alexashka
Those are low numbers for everyone involved.

I think this is a longterm space that Facebook is definitely not interested in
missing out on, so they'll keep it going.

How much does it cost really, in the scheme of things? If anything, I don't
know why Facebook simply doesn't ante up and steal some of the talent away
from the competitors, they have the cash to do it and I'm sure people would be
happy to work under Carmack.

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criddell
> I don't know why Facebook simply doesn't ante up and steal some of the
> talent away

To what end though? Say they could spend $10 million and quadruple the
resolution, halve the price, and reduce the barf factor of a Rift v2 in a
year. What then?

They would probably be better off funding a bunch of people to try to find
something compelling to do with the current generation of hardware. It's cool
for some types of games, but a market that's a subset of a subset isn't going
to set the world on fire. It's easy to come up with a cool demo and hard to
come up with a good application.

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agmcleod
> They would probably be better off funding a bunch of people to try to find
> something compelling to do with the current generation of hardware.

As a completely separate peripheral? Generally speaking most external
peripherals sell to niche markets.

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criddell
I was thinking more about some compelling application. The current generation
of headsets is pretty neat.

In the current form factor, I just can't see it moving beyond a gaming
peripheral anytime soon and the market for that is limited. I was excited when
Facebook got into this because _appealing to everybody_ is what they do. But
there's been nothing.

I'm starting to think VR is a dead end. There _is_ a market for it, but maybe
it's not very big.

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brador
Any restreams that don't require a login?

Edit found one:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=sjOKx5yntC4](https://youtube.com/watch?v=sjOKx5yntC4)

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sp332
Try using a private window. It only makes you log in if it detects certain FB
cookies and thinks you're a user.

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wofo
Interestingly, this works on desktop but not on mobile

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callesgg
John Carmack is the most natural presenter i have ever seen he just dumps his
thoughts in a clear informative way.

Not afraid of anything.

It certainly helps that he thinks about this topic from dusk till dawn. He has
interesting comments and thoughts about everything the questioners mentions.

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ghostbrainalpha
John Carmack once wrestled a bear for 6 hours until the bear tired out and
admitted defeat.

After the contest, he picked two bushels of berries and fed them to the bear
just to show there were no hard feelings.

They are still friends to this day....

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Jach
Sounds likely given the events of
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X68Mm_kYRjc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X68Mm_kYRjc)

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jhawk28
my favorite Facebook comment from the live stream: Artificial Intelligence
does exist. This guy is clearly not human

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faecbokk
Facebook, I don’t want to log into your fucking website. Can you please get
that fucking button out of the way, so I can watch the video?

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erikbye
"I do my morning trawl of Twitter and Hacker News inside the browser, in
Oculus, inside the Go"

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mojomark
The record: [https://youtu.be/vlYL16-NaOw](https://youtu.be/vlYL16-NaOw)

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shkkmo
Is there any good software yet for Gear VR (which could thus be used on Oculus
Go) for emulating multiple monitors?

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munchbunny
Might be worth asking why you want it? Simulated monitor(s) in VR on the first
generation of VR hardware run into blurriness problems from having low
resolution displays relative to the monitors they're simulating.

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shkkmo
I work remotely and travel all the time. It would be great to have a VR
headset that doesn't require a desktop and provides expanded screen real
estate. I know this is something that many people besides myself want.

The oculus go sounds like it solves the major blocking issue since it is stand
alone and thus doesn't depend on the computer for the 3d rendering capacity.
There is still the question of if using the VR device for work is
feasible/productive, but at least it is now possible which I why I was curious
as to if any such software exists.

Some of the resolution mismatch could be solved by simply expanding the
virtual screen and/or setting the computer to display at a lower resolution so
that the resolutions match closer. Some of this is probably helped by using a
cylindrical surface in the VR environment.

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Hupriene
The resolution you would have to use to do this without excessive head
movement would probably be more appropriate for mobile UI than desktop UI. I
don't think the current gen headsets can provide a satisfactory Excel
experience for example. Also, the relatively small 'sweet spot' that current
gen headsets provide make extended reading uncomfortable since it requires
head movement for what would usually be accomplished by eye movement.

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sundvor
So no new higher resolution devices yet? That's a bit disappointing. Any other
events in the pipeline where such may be announced?

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loup-vaillant
Having tried a couple VR headsets (including the Vive), I'm pretty sure
resolution is good enough for now. Yes, it needs improvement, but it wouldn't
be my top priority.

I currently have two pet peeves: wireless latencies, and hand tracking. I want
to cut the cable, which is cumbersome, causes problems if I spin too much, and
tether me to a small area. I also want to track free hands (perhaps with
gloves), for fine grained hand gestures (the Vive controller is good, but
still a bit intrusive).

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sundvor
I'm mainly into simulators such as DCS, Elite Dangerous and iRacing for VR. My
understanding is that increased resolution would make those titles better;
conversely, none require / would benefit greatly from hand tracking, so it's
all about different needs. :-)

I was hoping to see a new Rift to address this, but as such I'm happily
staying on my 95hz 34" 3440x1440 with TrackIR a bit longer.

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bronlund
Here's the recording:
[https://www.facebook.com/oculusvr/videos/1189602884474557](https://www.facebook.com/oculusvr/videos/1189602884474557)

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obiefernandez
This stuff is compelling, especially after having recently read Ready Player
One. However, how do you type? There's all this talk of how this tech is great
for programmers, with tons more screen space, etc... but unless I just missed
it somehow, don't see where a normal keyboard fits into the picture.

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zlynx
I already use a Das Ultimate keyboard. No key caps. It's pretty
straightforward to learn the keyboard if you don't fall back on looking. It's
like full immersion in a foreign language. If you _have_ remember things, then
you will.

So I can type while wearing an Oculus Rift. It's not a problem. And I'm sure
you can do it too.

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obiefernandez
That's not exactly what I mean. It looks like most VR rigs these days are
using some sort of control thing that you hold in your hand. Doesn't look like
you could type (with more than one finger of each hand) and hold it at the
same time.

On the other hand, maybe lightweight haptic gloves are a thing already and I
just don't know about it.

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cgallello
Gloves aren't really a mainstream consumer product yet in a way that you'd
expect in the future. When I'm typing in VR, I have to put my controllers down
to the side of the keyboard. Easy to pick them back up though. It certainly
would be nice to have the keyboard tracked so I don't have to slide my hands
on the desk to look for it, but once I grab it, typing is fine.

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hurd
Bow to the king.

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madisfun
Tl;dw anyone?

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mrdoob2
Noes. Only you.

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madisfun
Would you be so kind to give a summary of what you've seen?

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singron
There are some excerpts in other comments, but it's essentially a dense brain
dump for almost 2 hours. I dont think you can get a meaningful "tl;dr"-style
summary short enough that you wouldn't just ask tl;dr again.

