E3 2012: John Carmack Interview

Oh wait John does talk about focus! this video He seems to have not heard of the latest Volumetric 3D display technology: "time-multiplexing": link (the bottommost diagram, labeled "Switchable lens volumetric display.", made practical in 2008. The diagram labeled "Illustration of 3 mirrors display" is a bulkier 2004 technology.)

Focusing on gaming in my response here... I think the next "Big Thing" is that we are going to start moving more and more toward Augmented Reality (AR) [1] and Virtual Reality (VR) [2]. Thoughts: 1. Look for gaming to start heading in the direction of VR with technology like Oculus Rift [3]. Also, with someone of the caliber of John Carmack [4] involved, with not only his passion and skill, but his ability to work with graphics hardware manufacturers and driver developers to effect change and garner the necessary support and backing, expect to see vibrant, compelling developments in this field. Here is a video of John discussing some of his VR work. It is from E3 2012: this video 2. Look to see more games like Ingress [5] as things start to move toward AR. 3. I realize that this may be an extreme, perhaps well-into-the-future example, but check out this short film entitled, Sight . It is not difficult to imagine that this is where we are heading with technology like Google Glass (e.g., Note in the film the gamification of things like cooking and dating. Personally, the dating part is scary.) link -- [1] link [2] link [3] link [4] link [5] link

Carmack had this to say earlier, in a 3-part Tweet: "Everyone has had some time to digest the FB deal now. I think it is going to be positive, but clearly many disagree. Much of the ranting has been emotional or tribal, but I am interested in reading coherent viewpoints about objective outcomes. What are the hazards? What should be done to guard against them? What are the tests for failure? Blog and I'll read." Also, this: "I would expect Facebook to not exert any overt control over Oculus unless Oculus fumbles badly a few times, at which point they SHOULD." ~~~~ My personal take: At the end of the day, it takes more than vision and hard work to drive a dream into existence... it takes investment . It takes capital . This is what the deal brings to the table. Not only that, as you probably know by now, Michael Abrash has joined the team. I mean, read Michael's blog and note all of the technical challenges and issues with implementing VR. Read Carmack's technical writings on latency issues. There are a lot of problems to solve, on top of building and delivering a solid, commercial-quality hardware and software experience. For example, there is tracking head position and orientation, rendering without shearing and judder, latency issues, etc... everything must be perfect in order to deliver the perfect experience. Facebook brings the needed investment, plus the scaling infrastructure experience to the table. John has said, "I have a deep respect for the technical scale that FB

He was designing it on his own and did a good enough job to get Carmack interested and promoting it through forum interactions: this video I'm not sure what this Valve demo refers to.