
John Carmack "not all that excited" by next-gen hardware - shawndumas
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-06-19-john-carmack-not-all-that-excited-by-next-gen-hardware?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=european-daily
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phoboslab
I love how Carmack is constantly pushing the industry forward.

He made raycasting engines when everyone else was still doing 2D stuff. He
made fully 3D games when everyone else was still using raycasting. He built a
game engine with completely dynamic lighting, when everyone else was still
relying on lightmaps and some cheap hacks.

Arguably Duke Nukem 3D looked better than Quake, but polygonal was the future.
Half-Life 2 looked better than Doom 3, but dynamic lighting was the future.

While everyone else keeps iterating current technology (often to astonishing
results), Carmack does something new - something that may have a lot of
drawbacks initially, but _will_ be the future. I see the same happening in
other industries - take Tesla vs. any other automobile industry out there for
an example.

I haven't been this excited about a new piece of gaming hardware since I got
the N64 for my birthday back in 1996. I'll buy it!

(Of course it's not only Carmack who is doing research in that department.
This post isn't so much about praising him, as to praise innovative thinking.)

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gouranga
Let us not forget Unreal which was arguably better than quake at the time from
a technology standpoint...

However, I find that the gaming experience peaked with Unreal Tournament. Its
been about appearance over substance since (apart from tribes 2).

Stop whinging about the tech and make something fun again!

~~~
neutronicus
The orignal UT was so fun. The later ones tried to be Halo and suffered for
it.

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moe
I liked UT in its day, but isn't TF2 the current gold-standard?

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gouranga
Depends if you like hats :)

I don't :(

Actually I was a little disappointed by all the upselling when they made it
free to play on Steam.

UT was "buy CD for 20 quid" and then waste 4 years of my life (and many vodka
and dominos soaked attendances as Multiplay i-series events in the UK).

~~~
frou_dh
The UT and Q3A days were a classic time for competitive PC gaming! I loved
them both but Q3 (specifically duelling) had an extra touch of class in my
eyes.

TF2 is a weird one. I think it's undoubtedly a 10/10 game, but all the
evolution since release has made the experience a bit "bloated", to use a
normal software term. It's almost as if the game has had too much support for
its own good.

~~~
OmegaHN
I can see where you are coming from, but those extra stuff does add depth to
the game once you learn all the new weapons. Granted, this is coming from
somebody who plays a lot of TF2, but the "too many options" problem goes away
certainly after 30 hours of playing, and often much less.

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6ren
I knew someone working in VR about 20 years ago, and the big problem then was
latency - if there's too much delay between when your head moves and the scene
is rendered at the new orientation, it just doesn't work. IIRC the eyes are
sensitive, in this respect, to delays of less than a movie frame's 1/24 sec.

Carmack is both very concerned and very knowledgeable about latency in
rendering, so it seems likely that he's solved this problem... but I haven't
seen it explicitly addressed in anything I've read about his recent work. It
might help his advocacy if he explained why this tremendously exciting thing
failed last time, and that he's solved it, to overcome the "VR winter".

~~~
staunch
He's talked about this exact issue and is addressing it.

[http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/06/06/john-carmack-is-making-
a-v...](http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/06/06/john-carmack-is-making-a-virtual-
reality-headset-500-kits-available-soon-video-interview-inside/)

~~~
kalleboo
These videos were more interesting than the OP. Hearing him geek out about all
the things he's tried to make it work well makes me really excited for the
stuff that's in the pipeline.

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frou_dh
I found John Siracusa's summary of the march-of-progress on Hypercritical
insightful. Along the lines of:

> Processors can never be fast enough, memory can never be big enough. If you
> take your favourite device 20 years in to the future and try to convince
> people that it had been "good enough" to settle down, they'll rightfully
> laugh in your face.

\---

Then again, it's a double-edged sword if increasingly advanced ways to bombard
you with distraction, or make trash jingoistic war games, come along for the
ride.

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JVIDEL
Dude, Carmack was never a consoles guy, he didn't like the Genesis nor the
SNES, he didn't like the Playstation, Saturn and N64, etc...

If he was excited by nextgen consoles, now THAT would be news...

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SwellJoe
Did you read the article, at all? The point is what he _is_ excited about,
which is developments in VR.

~~~
JVIDEL
Yeah, 5 days ago, with next-generation he means consoles, not VR HMDs

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ivankirigin
Is the related kickstarter active yet? Link?

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nixarn
Not yet, it was planned to go live 1.5 weeks ago, but some "good news" delayed
it by 2 weeks, so it should probably go live this week. And the good news
might be some great hardware partner(s).

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motters
It doesn't sound as if anything has been done about the VR sickness problem.
Wearing bulky screens in front of your eyes probably doesn't have much of a
future, but I think that augmented reality using something like the EyeTap
device has a much bigger future which extends significantly beyond gaming.

~~~
Negitivefrags
My understanding is that the sickness was in large part due to the latency
(Solved by Carmack). Beyond that it's just a matter of getting the perspective
correct (Also solved by carmack).

~~~
motters
It occurs if there's a sustained mismatch between your vestibular sense and
visual odometry. That's ok if the game only involves looking around in a fixed
position, but if the avatar is walking/flying then you're likely to get VR
sickness, no matter what the frame rate is.

Apparently, VR users do habituate to the effects after a few days, in the same
manner as space sickness, but in the intervening period there can be some
unpleasantness.

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MPSimmons
Not to be cynical, but if I'd just released a 3d VR headset, _I'd_ be pitching
it, too.

~~~
slurgfest
And if I were as wealthy and respected as Carmack in the industry (and as
sharp) I would also be building rockets, supporting Linux gaming and similarly
quixotic but awesome enterprises.

~~~
its_so_on
I love that supporting Linux gaming is "quixotic" and up there with rocket
science. Too true.

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MisterBastahrd
I'm not all that excited about John Carmack's antiquated view of the video
game market. While there are companies releasing swaths of titles in different
genres, he's got... Doom 3. Yay, whatever.

Most people will not spend $500 on a peripheral. You can get some hardcore
gamers to do it, but unless the VR gear also includes a wireless headset,
you're shit out of luck. So now you're looking at close to $600 bucks a unit.
Good luck with that. I'd rather buy a 48 inch TV that I can use when I'm not
gaming.

~~~
slurgfest
John Carmack has written 3D engines widely used in commercial games for
decades now (most recently Rage - whatever its demerits as a game, the
technology is cutting edge and the game is definitely not antique). Whether or
not you liked the content in Doom 3 has very little to do with Carmack's very
technical, back-end work.

When the 3dfx boards came out, they cost something like $500. But it still
opened up a big market. I don't see why you are assuming that a wireless
headset is necessary and will not be included. Buy a TV if you want, all
you've shown is that you are not in the targeted market at this early stage.
(Probably because there is no way to provide that kind of hardware at lower
cost, particularly without more traction)

Carmack is certainly wealthy enough already, I would assume that his interest
in VR headsets is that he is a geek who wants to move the state of the art
forward (not too different from the reasons for doing Armadillo Aerospace)

~~~
ctdonath
_I don't see why you are assuming that a wireless headset is necessary and
will not be included._

Wireless VR is very important. Getting tangled in cables while you're
physically thrashing around sucks. Trust me (owner of original Virtual
iGlasses).

