John Carmack likes mobile hardware. He also digs the Oculus Rift. Oculus Rift, the company, seems to be really into the idea of getting the Rift hardware working on next-generation phones. If John Carmack joined up with Rift, that could only mean good things for us, right?
If you haven’t heard the news today, John Carmack was announced as the new CTO of Rift. And while he’ll still have some sort of “technical leadership" over at his old stomping grounds id Software, he’s going to be working in Dallas at Rift. Carmack wrote the following for today, touching on how he sees VR as the future:
“I have fond memories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming — the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods, and so on. Duct taping a strap and hot gluing sensors onto Palmer’s early prototype Rift and writing the code to drive it ranks right up there. Now is a special time. I believe that VR will have a huge impact in the coming years, but everyone working today is a pioneer.
“The paradigms that everyone will take for granted in the future are being figured out today; probably by people reading this message. It’s certainly not there yet. There is a lot more work to do, and there are problems we don’t even know about that will need to be solved, but I am eager to work on them. It’s going to be awesome!”
It’s not that hard of a leap in logic to think that Carmack’s going to potentially help Rift actually come to phones, especially since the company’s CEO seems really into this idea. Through the years, every time we’ve talked to Carmack he’s been super pumped about mobile and its potential, which maybe isn’t too surprising considering how much phones tend to improve year-to-year. These things are powerful devices and next year’s model is going to be that much more.
We’ll definitely keep our ears to the ground on this one, as it’d be really neat to get Rift on mobile. But, regardless, Carmack’s hiring is certainly going to make the Rift even better.
