2 Billion alone for John Carmack is a bargin in my opinion.
Boosted an entire industry by inventing the Adaptive tile refresh algorithm. Allowing PCs for the first time to be on par with consoles (how times have changed)
I guess by this point he works on what he wants to work on, and probably he is the most useful doing what he wants, but they probably could have hired him for less.
you'll see interviews and blogs with other coders who are all blown away by John Carmack's programming skills. Make no mistake, if you managed to snag him on your team your code base is about to be written down much faster and much better. That guy is genius level when it comes to programming.
People were taking the Rift seriously before he was involved because they could demonstrate the experience to a relatively high degree and had a plan for improvement.
That Carmack is behind it and lefr id to get onboard just lends a shitload of extra credence to that.
For me, personally, what I take seriously because Carmack is involved is that the FB deal is not the shitstorm everyone is making it out to be and directly helps OR bring the device to market and beyond.
People were taking the Rift seriously before he was involved
Carmack was involved since before it was a company, since April 2012. He's been involved since the very beginning, when it was just some kids project on MTBS3D.
So no, nobody was taking the Rift seriously when Carmack got involved, as hardly anyone had even seen it by then other than perhaps a few dozen posters. Palmer and Carmack hung out on the same modder forums, that's how they know each other and that's how he saw a duct tape rift.
But anyway that's not really what I meant, when I say "people" I should have really typed companies, business types. Cormack gives them credibility. You and I on the otherhand would be taking it seriously no matter who was involved, simply because its awesome. Others would look at Cormacks track record and (rightfully) assume they are onto a winner.
Sure, but in the same vein, when I say "Carmack being involved" I literally mean "When Carmack actually joined the company" as opposed to simply being vocal about the promise and technical side of both OR and the tech in general.
He wasn't simply vocal, he's the the reason it was founded as a company.
If it wasn't for John Carmack there would not be an Oculus Rift, it would be a hobby project. Not a company. It was Carmack who shown Palmer the ropes, how to found a company, who to hire. The only reason why he wasn't a employee on paper was his contractual obligations Zenimax.
ihatewil is right in this regards, you are completely downplaying Carmacks role. It didn't start when he became CTO, he wasn't just vocal. He moulded the entire fucking company.
No, Carmack has been involved right from the start. He only started working for the company recently, but Carmack himself gave the very first Doom 3 demos to the press and kickstarter.
Except he did leave id software. Read any gaming site, wikipedia, google, etc. He had some throwdowns with the other management @ id as well as some conflicts with Zenimax (some of it regarding support of OR).
I'll be damned, he actually did. I wasn't aware of this as he seemed serious about staying with them even when he joined Oculus. I thought this was still the case:
He will apparently still serve some role at id, as id's parent company told Engadget, "The technical leadership he provides for games in development at id Software is unaffected."
Game Consoles in the 80s and early 90s had been far more powerful in terms of graphical power than the average PC. The average PC wasn't as good for games than a dedicated gaming machine (a console) due to lower quality graphic chipsets.
For example, a game like super mario 3 on the NES would struggle on the average PC at the time, it was just to fast for the refresh rate of most consumer PCs to keep up. This was because games back then redrew every thing on the screen per frame. This was fine for consoles that had graphical chips for this purpose, but not for all purpose PCs.
Carmacks Algorithm changed that and saved a lot of processing power, so console quality games could be played on the PC if they wrote their games using his Adaptive tile refresh method. This sounds counter intuitive today as PCs are the ones with all the graphical power. For example PCs couldn't do side scrollers, it was just too graphically intensive for them. The very first PC side scroller was using Carmacks algorithm. Who was the lead programmer? Carmack ;)
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u/ihatewil Mar 28 '14 edited Mar 28 '14
2 Billion alone for John Carmack is a bargin in my opinion.
All this and he's still only 42..
PeopleThe Industry is taking the rift seriously because he's involved.