John Carmack jumps from VR to AI

I'm calling it right now: VR is dead. It's not, as someone tried to convince me recently, five to seven years away from breaking out, once they figure out exactly what socialization and spatial computing are and how VR can make them happen. No, VR is over; this generation of VR has failed.

For proof, look no further than John Carmack, who left id Software for Oculus because he was just that excited about the possibilities of VR, and who is now jumping off the VR ship before it sinks and takes him down with it. As reported by The Verge:

John Carmack, the chief technology officer of Facebook’s VR subsidiary Oculus, is stepping down this week. Carmack posted the news on Facebook today, saying he plans to focus his time instead on artificial general intelligence. He will remain in a “consulting CTO” position at Oculus, where he will “still have a voice” in the development work at the company.

Carmack will still work on some VR projects at Facebook, a spokesperson told Variety. In addition to general advisory tasks, for example, he will keep working on projects that maximize VR visual quality on lower-powered mobile hardware. However, he says that VR will “only be consuming a modest slice of my time” while he works on AI. “I have sometimes wondered how I would fare with a problem where the solution really isn’t in sight,” he said of the subject. “I decided that I should give it a try before I get too old.”

It was unclear whether the problem with no solution in sight referred to VR, or AI, or both.

People, if John freaking Carmack can't figure out what VR is good for, or how to convince skeptical consumers to buy in, then VR is probably doomed. Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus, couldn't solve this problem, either, and finally said that VR could be free and still not find any takers.

Facebook announced Oculus Quest, and it's already obsolete... according to its designers!

Remember when Facebook won (and lost) a lawsuit partly waged over the way they poached John Carmack away from Zenimax/ID? I wonder if they're re-thinking that acquisition after Carmack compared their next-generation "all-in-one" Oculus device to last-generation gaming consoles?

For the record, here is how Facebook/Oculus described their new device during the actual announcement, as reported by Gizmodo yesterday:

“This is it,” Mark Zuckerberg said to a crowd of developers and press at Facebook’s annual VR developers conference, Oculus Connect. “This is the all-in-one VR experience that we have been waiting for. It’s wireless, its got hand presence, 6 degrees of freedom, and it runs Rift-quality experiences.”

And here is how Oculus' CTO described the Quest at the same conference, as reported by arstechnica:

In a wide-ranging and occasionally rambling unscripted talk at the Oculus Connect conference today, CTO John Carmack suggested the Oculus Quest headset was "in the neighborhood of power of an Xbox 360 or PS3."

That doesn't mean the Quest, which is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC, can generate VR scenes comparable to those seen in Xbox 360 or PS3 games, though. As Carmack pointed out, most games of that generation targeted a 1280x720 resolution at 30 frames per second. On Quest, the display target involves two 1280x1280 images per frame at 72fps. That's 8.5 times as many pixels per second, with additional high-end anti-aliasing effects needed for VR as well.

"It is not possible to take a game that was done at a high-quality level [on the Xbox 360 or PS3] and expect it to look good in VR," Carmack said.

So... it's wireless, but needs a four-camera room-scale setup to work, and it aims to provide a Rift-quality experience, but can't because it just doesn't pack enough processing power. Also, count on it, Quest will cost significantly more than the Go, if only because of those cameras... and Oculus Go isn't exactly flying off shelves. Why does this exist, again?

Oculus v. Zenimax decided

From polygon:

A Dallas, Texas jury today awarded half a billion dollars to ZeniMax after finding that Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, and by extension Oculus, failed to comply with a non-disclosure agreement he signed.

In awarding ZeniMax $500 million, the jury also said that Oculus did not misappropriate trade secrets as contended by ZeniMax.

Of the $500 million, Oculus is paying out $200 million for breaking the NDA and $50 million for copyright infringement. Oculus and Luckey each have to pay $50 million for false designation. And Iribe has to pay $150 million for the same, final count.

Reached for comment shortly after the verdict, Oculus said they will be appealing, but that they look forward to eventually putting the case behind them.

Basically, Facebook and various Oculus execs were ordered to pay a total of $500 million in damages for poaching Carmack away from id/Zenimax, but were exonerated on ZeniMax's industrial espionage claims. Facebook, who have boatloads of  cash, intend to appeal the $500 million award, apparently confident that they can outlast ZeniMax in the litigation marathon and end up paying a hell of a lot less than $500 million. Look forward to an out-of-court settlement, with no admission of wrongdoing, and an undisclosed dollar value that clocks in well short of today's awarded damages.

With ZeniMax having failed to litigate their way into the developing tech sector, and Facebook holding the hammer going into the 10th end while being up 3 rocks, the overall effect on the VR industry should be basically nothing.

/drama