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Carmack joins Oculus VR as Chief Technology Officer [Update]
John Carmack, co-founder of id Software, has joined Oculus VR as Chief Technology Officer. Carmack will begin work on the Oculus Rift augmented reality headset on a full-time basis out of Dallas, Texas. Carmack has experience in working with the headset in the past, showing it in conjunction with Doom 3 BFG at QuakeCon 2012. Whether Carmack has officially left id Software is undetermined at this time. Update: Carmack will not be leaving id Software, according to a tweet issued by the company, which states that Carmack "will continue to provide leadership for our games in development."
Oculus Rift hires Doom co-creator John Carmack as Chief Technology Officer
It turns out that Doom co-creator John Carmack is more than just a virtual reality fanatic -- he's joining the company that's leading the most recent VR revolution, today announcing that he's taking the reins as Chief Technology Officer at Oculus Rift. In an email from the folks at Oculus, Carmack was confirmed to be out at the company he helped found -- id Software -- and joining Oculus full-time as CTO. 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." We've asked both Oculus and id's parent company for clarification.Carmack said in a prepared statement that the first time he wrote code for Oculus, it stood up to many firsts he's experienced in modern gaming: "the intensity of the first-person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods and so on." Additionally, he believes VR "will have a huge impact in the coming years" -- Carmack is the first announced big new hire at Oculus. CEO Brendan Iribe said in the announcement PR that Oculus is, "putting together a team of the brightest minds." Carmack, as it turns out, was at the very top of Oculus' list.Carmack got his hands on the Oculus Rift dev kit headset far earlier than most, spotting creator Palmer Luckey's still nascent creation in a VR forum online. After getting in touch, Carmack asked Luckey if he could check out a prototype, which led to Carmack showing off a ported version of Doom 3 at E3; Doom 3's Oculus Rift version was supposed to ship with initial dev units, though that was later called off. Carmack also runs a rocket building company named Armadillo Aerospace, which he recently characterized as "in hibernation."Update: Bethesda Softworks (parent company to id Software) responded with the following statement to today's news: "John has long been interested in the work at Oculus VR and wishes to spend time on that project. The technical leadership he provides for games in development at id Software is unaffected." We've followed up for clarification as to what that means for Carmack's efforts at id. In the note from Oculus, Carmack is said to be heading up and working out of newly created Dallas offices for Oculus.Update 2: Carmack tweeted a bit of clarity to his new role at Oculus among his other jobs, saying, "My time division is now Oculus over Id over Armadillo. Busy busy busy!"Update 3: Oculus offered yet another statement, this time saying, "John is working full-time Oculus. He is fully-engaged at Oculus as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). As you can guess from the title, CTO is never part time, it is a full time gig. John's role at id is between John and id."Update 4: And finally (we think), id's parent company Bethesda Softworks offered this final statement, "He's still going to be working at id, in id's offices."
NASA JPL takes a VR tour of Mars with Oculus Rift and Virtuix Omni (video)
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory likes to dip its feet in cutting edge consumer hardware from time to time, as evidenced by its trial use of the Leap Motion to remotely control a Mars rover. Well, you can't get much more cutting edge than virtual reality, which is why the team was so intrigued by the Oculus Rift when they first saw it at PAX last year. They signed up for a dev kit as soon as they could, cobbled the Rift together with a stereoscopic 360-degree panorama of Mars obtained from Curiosity, strapped on the VR goggles and found themselves magically transported to the Red planet. According to our interview with Human Interfaces Engineer Victor Luo, they then added terrain imagery captured from satellites so users could actually "walk" on Mars' rocky surface using an Xbox controller -- "with up to 25 centimeters per pixel." "However, we thought it'd be great if we could literally 'walk' on the terrain," said Luo. With that in mind, they contacted the people behind the Virtuix Omni treadmill. It so happens they were in the area for E3, so they brought the contraption up to JPL headquarters, hooked it up, and sure enough, they were able to "wander around" the surface of Mars with their own two feet. Join us after the break for more on our interview with Luo, plus a video clip of the aforementioned virtual Mars tour.
Ouya-exclusive Polarity reaches Steam Greenlight, offers Oculus Rift support
BlueButton Games' first-person puzzler Polarity will add a chamber to its labrynth-like vault for the PC with Oculus Rift support if it's voted onto Steam Greenlight, Eurogamer reports. Craig Littler, founder of the one-man studio, claims he "wasn't asking for much" when he tried to negotiate with Ouya, Inc. for the necessary revenue to retain Polarity's Ouya exclusivity. Littler says "they were fairly resistant to change and as such I think there will be plenty of devs who just use them as 'another platform' rather than committing to them exclusively." While Littler knows Polarity isn't a blockbuster, he wants "as many people to play it as possible so I can fund my next project." Polarity follows TowerFall as the next Ouya exclusive to call off its engagement and launch on additional platforms. We noted both as highlights during the Ouya's launch.
PaperDude VR resurrects Paperboy with Oculus Rift, Kinect, KickR and a bike
One sad aspect of modern tech is that it's all but ruined our dreams of slinging dead trees for comic book money after school. However, gizmos have enabled a killer sequel to the best paperboy simulation ever. Using a smattering of electronics -- and a real bike! -- PaperDude VR is the followup we never knew we wanted. Joining an Oculus Rift VR headset, Microsoft Kinect and Wahoo Fitness KickR into a sweat-drenched union, PaperDude VR creates an almost zen-like experience of tossing newspapers, knocking down road barriers and busting windows. Nostalgia's a powerful drug, and we'd love a ride to see if chasing the dragon of our youth is as good as we remember. Given developer Globacore's history though, the chances of seeing this outside a specialized kiosk are slim to none. Regardless, we have one niggling question: Do pixelated paperdudes dream of 8-bit dogs?
IndieCade teams with Oculus Rift for 'VR Jam,' a game dev competition culminating this October
The Oculus Rift sure is super, super neat, but outside of mods to existing games, it's still a bit light in the custom-made software department. And that's exactly why Oculus is ponying up $50K in prizes and teaming up with IndieCade this October for a game jam competition specifically meant to bolster that software support. One lucky dev / team will snag the grand prize of $10K and a chance to debut their game at this October's IndieCade Festival in Los Angeles -- they'll also head out to Orange County to meet with the team at Oculus, including wunderkind Palmer Luckey. Should you wish to get in on the VR-centric action, you've got the following three weeks to get things going (starting August 2nd and ending on August 25th). And if you don't have one of Oculus' Rift dev kits just yet, you'll have access to playtesting at various "playtest hubs" set up worldwide (NYC and LA locations are the only two confirmed thus far, with "more locations to be announced soon"). For the full stipulations on the contest, head below.
Intuitive Aerial takes the Oculus Rift on its first FPV drone flight (video)
The Oculus Rift: it's not just for gaming. Erik Torkel Danielsson, one of the co-founders of Intuitive Aerial, decided to put his shiny new Rift through its paces this week by pairing it with his company's Black Armor Drone. The hexacopter is designed for aerial photography, and the payload is pretty hefty -- attached to the rig are two cameras simultaneously recording video and an onboard laptop. The video is encoded by the laptop and transmitted to the land-based computer via WiFi for display on the Rift. It all sounds pretty nifty, but it's not quite a perfect system yet. There's a latency of about 120 milliseconds, which is feasible for FPV flight, but not ideal. That being said, it's still fun to see the Rift being put to new, innovative uses. To watch Intuitive Aerial's first flight, check out the video after the break.
Oculus explains the battles against latency and motion sickness in VR
Current VR just can't match our natural experiences -- real life doesn't have much lag, for example. However, Oculus has just published a pair of research posts showing the ways that it's closing the gap between simulation and reality. Steve LaValle, Oculus' Principal Scientist, explains how prediction minimizes the latency inherent to head tracking; coder Tom Forsyth, meanwhile, has advice on what developers can do to reduce motion sickness. Both studies dive deep, and may not be for the faint-hearted. If you're willing to follow Oculus down the rabbit hole, however, you may learn a thing or two about VR's future.
Half-Life 2 crowbars its way out of Linux beta, brings Oculus Rift support with it
Valve's Half-Life 2 along with Episodes One and Two are out of beta and available for download on Steam for Linux, the company announced today. While we welcome any Half-Life news, it's hard to not get disappointed when the number three isn't involved. Gordon Freeman's last known appearance uses the new SteamPipe content delivery system and "numerous" community bug fixes have been implemented. That's not all! Oculus Rift (and other virtual reality device) support has been added as well. We aren't aware of any other VR units besides the Rift, but in March Valve told us it's pursuing hardware itself. Speculating about other VR systems isn't far from speculating about Half-Life 3's existence -- we don't know anything at this point. However, Linux gaming site Phoronix says to expect more good Valve Linux news in July. We reached out to Valve for more info and will update if we hear anything back.
Valve updates Source SDK to include Oculus Rift support
Valve updated its free software dev tool Source SDK to support Mac OSX, Linux, and the Oculus Rift. Clients can be built and run in Windows, OSX, and Linux in Source SDK 2013, and dedicated servers can be run on Windows and Linux. As for the Oculus Rift, Source SDK 2013 can provide VR support via a compatible mod, enabling stereo and head tracking. Users can find the Source SDK 2013 code at dev project hosting service github now, while a new license agreement means mod makers can share their work "more easily." Also, the Hammer editor and other mod tools come with games rather than the SDK launcher, which Valve said is being phased out.
The Daily Roundup for 06.18.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Oculus remains focused on PC first for Rift, using new capital to scale up staff
The Oculus Rift company is barely one year old, but it's already off to a strong start. Developers have kits from a massively successful Kickstarter campaign, said kit has support from the industry's biggest game engine creators, and the consumer-friendly HD version is already being shown off to press (we loved what we saw at E3 2013 last week). And now the company's got a solid $16 million in the bank backing up its next step: creating a virtual reality headset that's significantly more mainstream than the $300 dev kit currently available. But don't think that alters the young company's promise of virtual reality on the PC platform; quite the contrary, as CEO Brendan Iribe told Engadget, "We're really focused on the PC as the platform to bring this to market right now."He said that Oculus isn't against bringing its VR headset to consoles, but that PC remains the primary platform. "We're always looking at other platforms -- looking at consoles, we're also looking at Android and the mobile side in a big way -- but right now we really are focused on the PC platform," he said. Sony's Shuhei Yoshida told us last week in an interview that, "We've got a couple of the development kits, and I tried it out and I love it," though he wouldn't outright say if the PlayStation 4 will support the Rift. We're betting "yes."As for what Oculus is doing in the short-term with the new infusion of cash? In short, it's being used to staff up (the company's still under 50 employees right now, mostly engineers). "We're using the funding to ramp up on hiring more smart people, the best and brightest that we can find," Iribe said. "The dev kit as it is now, that we're shipping, will stay the same, and the software side will just keep getting better." The vast majority of those new employees will be engineers -- one glance at the company's careers page quickly confirms this claim. Outside of new employees, though, Iribe said little will change in the company's ongoing goal to develop "the very best virtual reality platform we can create."
Next3D's plan to bring recorded video to the Oculus Rift
The dream of wearing a lightweight headset, like the Oculus Rift, in order to simulate physical presence isn't limited to the imaginary worlds of video games. One man's vision is that of immersive TV shows, movies and live sports. In fact, David Cole, co-founder of Next3D and an industry veteran who helps content creators and providers produce and deliver 3D, has been using his Rift dev kit to bring TV and film to life since the kits started shipping in March. The company is combining its video processing and compression technology with its experience in content production and stereoscopic delivery to offer what it's called Full-Court. Next3D hopes to leverage its existing relationships with creators and providers to assist them in jumping into the world of live-action VR content. This includes both pre-recorded and live broadcasts. We wanted to see this firsthand, so we jumped at the opportunity to witness the creation of content and experience the results. This trial run of Next3D's stereoscopic, 180-degree field-of-view camera rig, and the post-processing to adapt it to VR, was part of the production of the paranormal investigation show, Anomaly, at Castle Warden in St. Augustine, Fla. Being nearby, we braved the perils of the haunted surroundings to tell you about what we hope is only the beginning of virtual reality content.
Oculus snags $16 million from investors to bring virtual reality to the masses
Oculus announced its first round of funding today, wherein the company secured $16 million from investors specifically aimed at putting the Oculus Rift in consumer hands. The nascent virtual reality hardware company has repeatedly said its end goal with the Rift is to make it a consumer product; currently, only folks who backed the Rift on Kickstarter and those willing to spend $300 on a developer kit have access. A handful of games support the Rift, though more and more developers are promising not just support in their games, but entire games built from the ground up with VR in mind. An HD version of the headset was also introduced at last week's E3 gaming show.Oculus' new business partners apparently see enough financial potential in the Rift to not only invest heavily, but to also take on board positions -- both Santo Politi of Spark Capital and Antonio Rodriguez of Matrix Partners are now on the Oculus board of directors. "What Palmer, Brendan and the team are building at Oculus so closely matches the Metaverse that we had to be part of it. Working with them to get this platform to market at scale will be enormously exciting," Rodriguez said of today's news.The company launched last year with a Kickstarter campaign targeting $250,000 -- the project eventually raised just shy of $2.5 million, and now sells its Rift dev kit outside of the Kickstarter campaign.
Sony's Yoshida: We've got Oculus dev kits, 'I love it'
While the PlayStation 4 doesn't yet support the Oculus Rift, Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida is full of love for the VR device. Speaking to Engadget during a roundtable today, Yoshida said, "We've got a couple of the development kits, and I tried it out and I love it." While we've seen plenty of devs showing off their Oculus Rifts, it's interesting to note Yoshida kept the question of future PS4 support open with a "no comment" and, as Engadget notes, a big smile.
The Daily Roundup for 06.12.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Peter Molyneux talks next-gen consoles, communal gaming and Oculus Rift
Fabled (and Fable) game designer Peter Molyneux has long been a visionary in the gaming world, and his most recent effort, the Kickstarted title known as Godus, has piqued our Curiosity. However, as a veteran of the console world, we jumped at the chance to get his take on next-gen along with an update on his own projects. Surprisingly, Molyneux wasn't particularly enthused with the new generation of consoles. Part of the problem, as he sees it, is that consoles are still too focused on the living room, while our digital lives are much more mobile -- which is why, in part, Godus is being built for laptops and phones first. "I wanted them [the consoles] to shock and surprise me" with new ways to integrate with mobile devices, he says, but the current mobile features feel like a "bolt-on" rather than an integral part of gameplay. Aside from all the next-gen talk, we got an update on the man who removed Curiosity's final block (he's just beginning to enjoy the fruits of godhood), and got his thoughts on Oculus Rift (spoiler: he's a fan). While words describing an interview are good, an actual interview is better -- this one awaits you after the break.
PlayStation 4's Shuhei Yoshida on Oculus Rift: We have dev kits, 'I love it'
Sony Computer Entertainment head of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida is a big Oculus Rift fan, it turns out. "We've got a couple of the development kits, and I tried it out and I love it," he told us in an interview this morning at E3 2013. Whether the PlayStation 4 will support it is another question. "No, it doesn't," Yoshida told us. Not yet, that is.When we asked whether the company's planning on offering support in the future, he only offered a "No comment" with a big smile. The picture of the retail Oculus Rift is potentially a bit clearer now, especially given this week's addition of an HD version of the headset. We'll be sure to keep on Sony about Oculus support on the PlayStation 4 as the year goes on.
Virtuix Omni VR treadmill shows up at E3, we go feet-on (video)
I'm a little nauseous and a bit sweaty. This was my first time using the Oculus Rift. It's the sort of thing you've got to ease into, really -- sitting stationary, letting your brain adjust to the whole experience. Or you could just pop the thing on and run in place on a treadmill in a downtown Los Angeles hotel suite. Your call, really. Just don't come crying to me when you're having a bit of trouble standing up straight, as you attempt to step down from the slippery surface at the end of your session. Have I seen the future? Hard to say, of course, but whatever it was that just happened was neat -- and if you were one of the 2,000 or so folks who got in on Virtuix's Kickstarter, it'll be heading your way in January. The company's CEO, Jan Goetgeluk took me through the paces of the system, a stationary design he settled on after toying around with a more traditional treadmill model. The Omni is really quite a simple thing at its heart, a concave, slick surface attached to two bars that converge in a circle. The company's designed special soles, as well -- plastic pieces raised at the heel and ball of the foot, with a fabric friction surface on the toe. Walk around and your feet slip. That's about it, really. Of course, it takes some getting used to, and Goetgeluk stood aside as I learned to walk again: lean forward, step down on the heel and let the rest of your foot slide with it. It took a few minutes, and I'm still not exactly an expert %Gallery-191176%
Hands-on with EVR, a spaceship dogfighting game demo built for Oculus Rift
We've seen plenty of demos showcasing the Oculus Rift, but actual gameplay experience with the VR headset has been tough to come by. We first heard about a spaceship dogfighting game called EVR being built for the Oculus Rift by game studio CCP a couple months ago. And, today at E3 we finally got to put a dev unit to its intended use playing the game. As we noted before, it's a Wing Commander-style game featuring 3v3 gameplay in open space and amongst asteroid field. Upon donning the Oculus Rift and a pair of Razer Kraken headphones, we found ourselves sitting in the cockpit of our very own starfighter. Looking around, we could see the sides of the launch tube, our digital hands manning the flight controls, and looking down revealed our legs and even the popped collar of our flight jacket. In previous Rift demos, we couldn't see our digital avatar, but being able to do so in EVR really added to the immersiveness of the experience.%Gallery-191144%
