John Carmack
John D. Carmack II (born August 21, 1970) is an American computer programmer best known as a co-founder of the video game company id Software and for his work in virtual reality. At id Software he was the lead programmer on influential 1990s games including Doom and Quake, and he is widely credited with advancing real-time 3D graphics through engine programming techniques such as binary space partitioning and surface caching.[1] In the 2010s he turned his focus to virtual reality, serving as chief technology officer of Oculus and later as a consulting CTO at Meta, before leaving in late 2022 to work full time on artificial general intelligence through his company Keen Technologies.[2]
id Software background
Carmack co-founded id Software in 1991 along with John Romero, Tom Hall, and Adrian Carmack, and he served as its lead programmer for games including Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake.[1] His engine work helped popularize fast 3D rendering on consumer personal computers, and he became known for periodically releasing the source code of older id engines under free software licenses.[1] Carmack joined Oculus VR while still at id Software and resigned from id Software on November 22, 2013 to concentrate on virtual reality.[3]
Virtual reality work
Early Oculus Rift demonstrations
Carmack became involved with the Oculus Rift before Oculus VR was formally established. He obtained an early prototype headset built by Palmer Luckey, adapted it, and used it to demonstrate a virtual reality version of Doom 3: BFG Edition at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in June 2012. The demonstration drew significant press attention and helped raise the profile of the project.[4]
Joining Oculus VR
On August 7, 2013, Oculus VR announced that Carmack had joined the company as chief technology officer, working from a new office in Dallas, Texas.[3][5] Oculus founder Palmer Luckey said that Carmack's early experiments with the Rift had helped build momentum around virtual reality.[5] In March 2014, Facebook announced an agreement to acquire Oculus VR for a deal valued at about 2 billion dollars, and Carmack remained with the company as CTO after the acquisition.[6]
Mobile VR and the Samsung Gear VR
As CTO, Carmack led Oculus's work on mobile virtual reality, which centered on a collaboration with Samsung that produced the Samsung Gear VR, a headset that used a compatible Samsung smartphone as its display and processor.[7] The Gear VR Innovator Edition was announced on September 3, 2014, and was described as "Powered by Oculus."[7] Carmack called the device a "landmark first step" for mobile virtual reality and said he had dedicated the previous year to making the best mobile VR system possible.[7] He described software work that supported the platform, including custom drivers for the head tracking sensors, real-time scheduling priorities for VR threads, fixed clock rates, and multi-context GPU threading.[7]
Latency reduction and timewarp
Much of Carmack's virtual reality work focused on reducing the latency between a user's head movement and the corresponding update on the display, a factor closely tied to comfort in VR.[8] He is associated with the development of timewarp, a technique that geometrically warps an already rendered frame just before it is sent to the headset to account for head rotation that occurred during rendering. Carmack wrote about the idea in early 2013 and introduced the feature to Oculus software in April 2014.[8]
A related technique, Asynchronous Timewarp, applies the same geometric warping to address dropped frames. If a frame does not finish rendering in time, the system reprojects the previous frame using the latest tracking data rather than displaying a stale or missing image. It is called asynchronous because it runs in parallel with rendering rather than afterward.[8] Asynchronous timewarp first appeared on the Gear VR Innovator Edition in late 2014 and later came to the personal computer with the consumer Oculus Rift in March 2016.[8]
Consulting CTO
On November 13, 2019, Carmack announced that he was moving from the role of Oculus CTO to a "Consulting CTO" position so that he could reduce his time at the company and devote more attention to artificial general intelligence.[9] In the new role he continued to advise on strategy and technical feasibility while spending most of his working time on other projects.[9]
Departure from Meta
In December 2022, Carmack left Meta, ending his tenure with the Oculus and virtual reality organization. In an internal memo that was later leaked, he criticized what he saw as a lack of efficiency in the company's VR and AR efforts, writing, "We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort," and that he thought the organization was "operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy."[2] After parts of the memo were reported by the press, Carmack posted the full message publicly on December 17, 2022, describing the move as the end of his decade in virtual reality.[2]
Keen Technologies and artificial general intelligence
On August 19, 2022, Carmack announced Keen Technologies, a company focused on developing artificial general intelligence, and said it had raised 20 million dollars in funding.[10] The round was backed by investors including Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Patrick Collison, Tobi Lutke, Jim Keller, Sequoia Capital, and Capital Factory.[10] Carmack described artificial general intelligence as a category of systems that could in theory perform any task a human can.[10] At the time of the announcement he was still consulting for Meta on virtual reality, and he left that role at the end of 2022 to concentrate on Keen.[10][2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "John Carmack: Biography and Facts". 2024-08-17. https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Carmack.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Bonifacic, Igor (2022-12-17). "John Carmack leaves Meta with a memo criticizing the company's efficiency". https://www.engadget.com/john-carmack-leaves-meta-043202664.html.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Sheffield, Brandon (2013-08-07). "John Carmack joins Oculus VR team as CTO". https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/john-carmack-joins-oculus-vr-team-as-cto.
- ↑ Souppouris, Aaron (2014-03-28). "Oculus Rift: From $2.4 million Kickstarter to $2 billion sale". https://www.engadget.com/2014-03-28-oculus-rift-from-2-4-million-kickstarter-to-2-billion-sale.html.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Mitchell, Richard (2013-08-07). "Carmack joins Oculus VR as Chief Technology Officer". https://www.engadget.com/2013-08-07-carmack-joins-oculus-vr-as-chief-technology-officer.html.
- ↑ Hempel, Jessi (2014-03-25). "Facebook buys Oculus VR, a virtual reality gaming company, for $2 billion". https://fortune.com/2014/03/25/facebook-buys-oculus-vr-a-virtual-reality-gaming-company-for-2-billion/.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Lang, Ben (2014-09-03). "John Carmack: Samsung Gear VR is a "Landmark first step" for Mobile VR". https://www.roadtovr.com/samsung-gear-vr-announcement-john-carmack-landmark-first-step/.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Heaney, David (2021-03-28). "VR Timewarp, Spacewarp, Reprojection, And Motion Smoothing Explained". https://www.uploadvr.com/reprojection-explained/.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Matney, Lucas (2019-11-13). "John Carmack steps down at Oculus to pursue AI passion project 'before I get too old'". https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/john-carmack-steps-down-at-oculus-to-pursue-ai-passion-project-before-i-get-too-old/.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Wiggers, Kyle (2022-08-19). "John Carmack's AGI startup Keen raises $20M from Sequoia, Nat Friedman and others". https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/19/john-carmack-agi-keen-raises-20-million-from-sequoia-nat-friedman-and-others/.