
John Carmack Q&A - Arjuna
http://fortune.com/2014/12/29/oculus-vr-john-carmack-extended
======
thefreeman
It kind of saddens me that the mobile initiative seems to have completely
hijacked the Oculus development. I'm starting to think that must have been
part of Zuckerberg's deal when he acquired them.

On one hand it certainly makes sense from a mass adoption perspective, if you
can make it work on a mobile you immediately have the biggest computing
audience in the world.

However I have to assume that there is a ton of time spent on things that just
would not be issues if it were hooked up to a full fledged PC. Work in
reducing power consumption, increasing framerates, etc, are all efforts that
could instead be spent on the actual VR experience instead.

~~~
mrfusion
I honestly think they just couldn't make the pc fast enough to be able To
handle VR. I bought a top of the line pc and video card for my dk2 and I still
can't play half of the games because of judder. (Most dk2'rs will pretend this
issue doesn't exist.)

There's probably just too much legacy technology on the pc to make it work
plus all the latency of driving the display. A self contained mobile solution
that can be qa'd at the factory may be the only way to go.

~~~
wlll
Well, I bought a top of the line PC and GPU (GTX 980 and an Intel i7) and I
don't get any judder at all. I'm not imagining it. How do you have you yours
set up?

~~~
mrfusion
See my other reply,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8839174](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8839174)

I wonder if the 980 would make that much of a difference, or if the i7 is that
different. You'd think CPU wouldn't matter so much, and I did get high speed
memory.

------
lotsofmangos
_Everybody just assumed that first-person shooters were going to be the big
thing in VR because [Doom 3 BFG Edition] was the initial demo. But very
quickly Oculus learned about the issues with simulator sickness. Comfortable
VR experiences had to be these seated cockpit games and you’re diverging from
that at your own risk. The great games are the space sims and driving sims and
these experiences where you’re basically sitting at a table with nothing
happening in front of you. A lot of interesting things are evolving there.
There are great games that can be made._

I suspect that stimulating the vestibular nerve is going to be the detail that
makes VR.

~~~
alfiedotwtf
I'll put my money on the porn industry and not the gaming industry being the
make or break for VR v2.0. If there was a killer porn app for Oculus, they
would fly off the shelves.

~~~
adventured
Porn, online VR gambling, VR Sims / Minecraft / Farmville equivalent, and
casual VR puzzles.

Online gambling is bigger than the porn industry, in terms of monetary value.
They'll spend a lot of money building virtual worlds to gamble in.

Video, images, and travel will also of course big massive.

~~~
kybernetikos
Having used Giants of the solar system and Dinotown on the rift, I think
education will be a massive useful area for VR. Although I take the point that
it might not be huge in terms of $ value.

------
wildermuthn
I've demoed the DK1 and DK2 to countless friends and family, but it was only
with the GearVR that people started saying things like, "Wow, I just saw the
future. These are going to be everywhere..."

I wasn't excited about Mobile VR, but the experience of freedom from wires and
a built-in UI convinced me otherwise. VR might work better with a fast
desktop, but VR is far more accessible (and enjoyable at the moment) in mobile
form.

~~~
bane
The big problem for VR is not the goggles and head tracking, it's going to be
the interface bits.

The physical props you have to hold on to explore the virtual whatever you're
looking at. If VR takes off, this will be a major peripheral market as
companies form to sell everything from steering wheels to VR gloves with
individual finger tracking to all sorts of stuff.

The problem of course has always been that wire going to your PC keeps you
from doing lots of obvious stuff.

When I saw the early demos working off of smartphones, I saw the path to
acceptance open quite a bit. It absolutely changes things quite a bit.

~~~
wildermuthn
A swivel chair works nicely for now, but I'm very eager to see what interface
devices Oculus is working on.

------
leohutson
A bit off topic perhaps, but I'd like to see someone make an AR goggle to
assist tradespeople. Since they are obligated to wear safety goggles anyway,
it doesn't seem impractical to have something a bit smarter that can overlay
plans, dimensions, and highlight the locations of hazards like other workers
or machinery.

~~~
icco
That's basically what Google Glass is doing.

------
icco
Thing that weirded me the most about this article? That Fortune put the
shorter version in their magazine. You're telling me, if I buy your magazine,
I get less content? Do not understand.

