John Carmack resigns from id to focus on Oculus Rift

http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/22/5134500/id-software-founder-john-carmack-resigns

This is pretty big news. John Carmack is pretty much the father of modern real-time graphics rendering. A few months ago he joined the Oculus team while still working at id. He says he's going to be a technical adviser for id but it seems that his focus is now on the Oculus Rift and the software for their VR.

Pretty crazy stuff.

Oh shit......

id is dead now. With Carmack gone and most of the original founders already working on other things, I expect to see id sell up and close shop.

What the hell?!?

Who didn't expect this?
All he's been doing the past couple of years is just oozing over the occulus rift. Doom 4 will come out and Zenimax will close up shop as Id Doesn't make anything of amazing stature to begin with./

Doom 4 will never live up to the hype. It'll be the next Duke Nukem Forever.

That is some pretty crazy stuff. That said, I can understand his enthusiasm. I've used the Rift and it's pretty special. I'm not even excited for these new consoles, but I'm sure getting the consumer version of the Oculus Rift when it comes out.

Oh wow that is great news.

I knew he left, but didn't know why. This reaffirms my theory that it was to focus on Rift.

That's some good friggin' news.

damn that's big

That sucks for id but it gives Oculus a pretty big boost, interested in seeing how this plays out.

Wow, I can't believe this.

Wow, I can't believe this.

I tried the Rift at Comic con, cant imagine wearing that thing for an extended period of time.

ID are has beens. Like a great rock band you use to love long past there sell by date.

I hope we dont have to use Oculus Rift in the new Doom game lol

Wow.

Why would he want to work on something so gimmicky?

This is more sweet than bitter for me to be honest.

There are already many 3D engines out there with good talented teams behind them. I'm more excited to see impressive things to happen in the Oculus Rift space, and feel Carmack could potentially deliver on that with the rest of the Oculus team.

Because it's not. This isn't some gimmicky gameplay feature that works for just a single game series, this is something that applies to most genres equally. Any time you have a game that moves through a 3d environment the Rift can directly benefit the experience.

Rift is the next big thing. PC always advancing gaming.

Yeah, I remember John talking about VR headsets about a year ago here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYa8kirsUfg

He was really really into it before he joined OR company

@Cyberdot Think of it as inventing a new monitor/tv which hasn't really changed in the last 20 years except for resolution and clarity of that 2d images that looks 3d. We're not talking half baked motion controls here, its a visual experience that is completely different than just wearing 3d glasses at a theater and playing games with it.

Holy shit. This is big news.

id did create an engine that 2 other studios are using, so they can't close up shop. If Doom 4 bombed, then they'll just have id focus on improving id tech 5 or making the next iteration of it and have the rest of the staff as support for other studios I guess.

That's big news considering his contributions to 3D gaming.

id doesn't seem to have much of any talent that they used to have, so who knows what their future will be like.

For all the people on the edge in regards to whether OR is a gimmick or not, this news should push you over. John Carmack is a mover and a pusher, he enjoys and thrives being on the cutting edge, doing things that have never been done before. This gives OR a lot more credibility I think.

Oculus Rift. Doesn't it need to render the game twice? Once for each eye? So to play games at PS4 quality you'd need like 2 titans. So you need a $2k-$4k PC then the Oculus Rift itself which will be like another thousand bucks. Pffffff. All the "master race" rich boys living in their bubble so ronery wondering why nobody gives a shit about their platform. Or their gimmicks.

And so the last of the original founders finally bows out.

RIP id Software. It was a good run.

I'm excited for the future of Oculus Rift. John Carmack is a major asset to the team.

Not that Id has actually been relevant for the past decade...but is it now to early to officially declare them dead in the water?

@Wasdie: no big deal for now. Doom tech is probably done. Carmack only does the engine not the game design or levels. That was Romeros, Tom Hall, American McGee, Adrian Carmack and Sandie Petersons job back in the 90s... Since then others have taken their place, and carmack still does the engine only... which with that done... it won't be an issue for a few years. By then he can work on the next engine.

Probably because it's not actually gimmicky.

That's good. I'm hoping they nail it.

Honestly, I'd just wait and see.

Carmack is'nt the backbone of the entire industry and if he was vitally important to Id, they had a weak businessmodel.

Not that big of a deal. .His megatexture was also a failure showing worse texture than the best and was beaten by others devs to ship anyway.

Honestly, I am surprised. This guy is one of the Juggernauts of PC Gaming and PC Graphics in general. Honestly, I don't know if Oculus will gain wide acceptance. I would rather have him push PC gaming graphics, like he did with Doom, Quake I, Quake II, Quake III and Doom 3. Rage gaphics tech wasn't that impressive compared to what DICE and Crytek had out. I was hoping that with Doom 4, ID Software would take the graphics crown back. If there's one person who has the technical ability to take the graphics crown back from the Europeans it would America's John Carmack. It's been nearly 10 years since Doom 3 was released and wowed the world with it's graphics.

Now, my hope that DOOM 4 would push the graphics envelope is over.

Megatextures weren't a failure. They are awesome and still are. Blame the consoles 512mbs of ram and DVD for small game size. He said the 100 gb version of the game had looked 100x better than the version they released.

He did 720p at 60fps on the PS3/360 which is damn impressive. If the driver support was there on the PC it wouldn't have had nearly the problems it did.

And he's been riding on that fact ever since. You don't see everyone following Nolan Bushnell's word as if it were law simply because he started console gaming. Honestly has he actually done anything as of late that merits praise? He's working on Rift, yes, but that's about it.

id had terrible artists and a lot involves just that.

This is kind of old news, announced in August in fact.

http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/john-carmack-joins-oculus-as-cto/

Bout time really, him and trhe rest of id have been doing fvck all for a while. If they HAVE been doing something they seem to have nothing to show for it

Hopefully a great tech head like him can help big time with the Rift

the article states that he joined the team..not that he resigned from Id.

There is a difference

@Wasdie:

it was a failure in the sense that it took so long and was beaten by brink to have virtual textures first.And that his game which took forever, ended up not looking great with baked lighting.Console also had dynamic resolution going subhd.

I'm sorry but any game that needs 100GB of space is dumb.

They may look great alright but that's just not a feasible size at all

I doubt it would have looked great anyway since as I said, their artists suck!

Ah I thought he had resigned back then. All's good then.

No. You're just used to games reusing art too much. Game are on their way to be 100+ GBs when people start demanding 100% unique environments. Id Tech 5 is ahead of its time, simple as that.