Seeing the future: John Carmack joins Oculus Rift team

Gasp and shock! John Carmack, id Software’s famed tech man, has joined the Oculus team as their new Chief Technology Officer.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of what everyone’s saying about this, I should note that this doesn’t mean he’s leaving id – this is in addition to his responsibilities there. As Carmack himself phrased it on Twitter: “My time division is now Oculus over Id over Armadillo. Busy busy busy!” (Armadillo being Armadillo Aerospace, currently “in hibernation”.)

But I know that what you’re really after are details on what Carmack has to say about this. Fear not: quotes incoming.

“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,” said Carmack on Oculus’ announcement page. “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!”

Carmack’s got a bit of a history with the Rift, having ported Doom 3 over to it early in its lifecycle and discussed about how much he liked it. Now he’s working on it directly. Whether you believe the tech can get past problems like “nausea” and “headaches” or not, the future for it is going to be fairly interesting.