Slashdot Mirror


John Carmack's Oculus Connect Keynote Probably Had Samsung Cringing

An anonymous reader writes John Carmack, famed keystone developer of 3D networked gaming, has now been working with virtual reality company Oculus for over a year. Much of that time has been spent collaborating with Samsung on the forthcoming Gear VR headset. At his keynote presentation during Oculus Connect, Carmack took to the stage with 90 unscripted minutes of no holds barred discussion of the last 12 months in VR. 'I believe pretty strongly in being very frank and open about flaws and limitations so this is kind of where I go off message a little bit from the standard PR plan and talk very frankly about things,' he said to applause from the audience.

88 comments

  1. Samsung stockholder applause? by turkeydance · · Score: 0

    off-script sometimes means off-project.

    1. Re:Samsung stockholder applause? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 0

      I'm amazed that Samsung was willing to work with him in the first place. To judge by their products, you can't do product development for Samsung unless your resume is utterly devoid of software that anybody would ever want to use.

    2. Re:Samsung stockholder applause? by Teancum · · Score: 3, Insightful

      With the money Mr. Carmack earned from the sale of Oculus, do you think he cares? He has suggested that he wouldn't mind simply going back to running his spaceship company, so can Samsung give him a good reason to do that?

      This definitely sounds like somebody who doesn't give a damn.

    3. Re:Samsung stockholder applause? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, who could imagine somebody who cared enough to be honest...

  2. John Carmack's keynote had Samsung cringing by ArcadeMan · · Score: 4, Funny

    He kept scraping the chalkboard with his Samsung Galaxy S5.

  3. What, no positional tracking? by Animats · · Score: 0

    What, they're going to ship a VR headset without positional tracking? When you turn your head, nothing happens? That's not VR. That's a TV you wear on your head.

    1. Re:What, no positional tracking? by kav2k · · Score: 1

      On the Gear VR? They've got accelerometer data. It's probably not as precise as external tracking, but still.

    2. Re:What, no positional tracking? by binarylarry · · Score: 4, Informative

      It means tracking translation. The Gear VR tracks your head's rotation but not translation which triggers a reflex in your brain that causes nausea.

      Basically the brain knows that your head moved a certain way and what your eyes see doesn't match that. In turn, your brain decides that the only explanation is that you've been poisoned and makes you want to hurl as a defense mechanism.

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    3. Re:What, no positional tracking? by smaddox · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Oculus's software uses a ball-stick model of the head, so that turning also produces a translation. Don't knock it till you've tried it (I'm assuming here you haven't tried it), they've almost completely solved the nausea problem, even for sensitive people.

    4. Re:What, no positional tracking? by msauve · · Score: 2

      You track translation with an accelerometer (like rotation with a gyro). But neither is perfectly repeatable - they don't return exactly to zero. So, without some absolute reference for both, things get off. A compass can provide an absolute reference for horizontal rotation, the accelerometer provides an absolute reference for vertical (tilt - a compass might be able to do both, really), but an absolute reference for translation is more difficult - how do you move across the room and then return to exactly the same place? Apart from external sensors, one might make do with ultrasonic sonar (or infrared lidar?), if willing to live with constraints on the room layout.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    5. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There isn't any study of sufficient size that actually show's they've solved the problem. They have a few anecdotes, and a questionable sample at best. We'll know if they've actually solved the problem when they release it to the mass market, but if they've failed they'll have set VR back to square one.

    6. Re:What, no positional tracking? by janoc · · Score: 5, Informative

      That isn't actually true. You *will* get sick even with positional tracking, as many people found out when the DK2 Rift was released. Just look in this thread, for example:
        https://www.reddit.com/r/oculu... Positional tracking enhances immersion and potentially presence, but it is not really a fix for motion sickness. Unfortunately many people don't understand this.

      The problem is deeper - you are correct that the sensory mismatch between what you see and what your sense of balance (inner ear) and proprioception (nerve endings in your muscles relaying the position of your limbs) are telling you is what causes the problem. However, that is not really tied to the positional tracking. It is fairly easy to demonstrate - many people get sick even with full 6DOF tracking using a very expensive big bucks tracking system, walking around in a CAVE, not using an HMD at all (CAVEs are usually far less motion sickness inducing than HMDs).

      Most of the nausea problems are caused by poor application design - sudden accelerations are bad, because you don't expect them (it is akin to someone pulling the rug from under you!), motions not initiated by the user are bad (again, unexpected movement!), inappropriate navigation schemes - strafing, head bobbing, "aiming with your head" (not being able to look and change direction of movement independently - as in all FPS games that use mouselook), etc. All these things cause motion sickness. No amount of tracking wizardry is going to help you there unless the design of the application is fixed - and these problems are unfortunately in almost every single demo that was released for the Rift so far, despite there being 30+ years of published research on VR available.

      Then there are problems that are often ascribed to motion sickness, but are not really - headaches, dizziness, eye strain. Those are often caused by a poorly adjusted HMD. This is where Rift suffers a lot, because unless you have perfect vision and your eyes are spaced exactly the same as the Rift lenses, you will get eye strain and headache after a while due to a blurry, out of focus image. This is why commercial HMDs have both dioptric adjustment (the two pairs of replaceable lenses really aren't a solution) and interpupillar distance adjustment (the lenses or even displays themselves can be moved closer or farther apart). Another issue with the Rift-like HMDs is with scenes where the textures and jaggy, not antialiased lines cause visible "beating" (moire) against the raster of the relatively low-res display, provoking a lot of visual discomfort - this was really bad in the DK1, DK2 reduced it a bit thanks to the higher resolution and pentile display. That's why dark scenes work best with Rift, because the dark pixel raster is not that visible.

    7. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The camera, use it for tracking objects on the room and get a absolute reference of the environment.

    8. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Twinbee · · Score: 1

      I hope small amounts of lag in VR causes nausea too, because if there's one thing developers don't seem to care about enough, it's latency/lag and frame rate (no, even 60fps isn't good enough). If they can get it below 10ms lag, then I'll start to be a bit happier.

      --
      Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
    9. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > [Another bad thing was] scenes where the textures and jaggy, not antialiased lines cause visible "beating" (moire) against the raster of the relatively low-res display provoking a lot of visual discomfort...

      I got simulator sickness while using the DK1. I maybe had two or three sessions with the thing. Of all the things that might have contributed to my disorientation, I can't imagine that moire is one of them. I've been playing PC video games for many, many decades. Moire and edge jaggies don't confuse my vision processing system.

      As an aside, when I was much, much smaller, I used to get sim sickness from extended FPS game sessions on a PC with a boring-olde monitor. As the months went by, I became immune to FPS-on-a-monitor-induced sim sickness. I'd be willing to bet that, with regular use of any of the released Oculus hardware, my Oculus-induced sim sickness would vanish.

    10. Re:What, no positional tracking? by binarylarry · · Score: 1

      Yep pretty much anything causes it, the VR experience has to be perfect or old brain freaks out.

      Crazy things, brains are.

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    11. Re:What, no positional tracking? by binarylarry · · Score: 1

      It's not wrong so much as it's not the complete picture.

      But I'm not in the business of writing novels on slashdot.

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    12. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Decades ago I had pneumonia and was given floxin as an anti-biotic
      It was effective but gave me nausea every time that i went to play wolfenstein 3d, I had to fall back to playing commander keen until I was off the floxin

    13. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 1

      I can confirm there's an application design issue there: both me and my girlfriend made the mistake of running backwards in the Tuscany demo, and when you do that you can pretty much feel your stomach lurch forwards. There's definitely a learning curve there where VR games are not going to be able to have sudden accelerations like we do with current movement systems. Though conversely, I felt great playing HL2:DM in VR - getting blown about by fans and the like just felt...like well I was being thrown about, but didn't make me feel sick at all.

    14. Re:What, no positional tracking? by NormalVisual · · Score: 4, Funny

      But I'm not in the business of writing novels on slashdot.

      No, because that's Bennett Haselton's job.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    15. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Considering I'm sitting here with their latest offering and know you're full of bullshit because I'm not sensitive and the product still makes me feel very unwell in many instances, BULLSHIT

    16. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Confusador · · Score: 1

      This is talking about the Gear though, not the Occulus DK. Has anyone tried the Gear yet?

    17. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "almost" isn't fixed. It has to be 100% accurate if it is to succeed beyond a new toy for dweebs with no life.

    18. Re:What, no positional tracking? by CastrTroy · · Score: 1

      This might be the reason it never took off the fist time around, 15 years ago, and why it's still failing to take off. For VR to work, you have to design the game specifically to work with the VR hardware. But the VR hardware has always been so expensive that only a few people are willing to buy it, and therefore there is not incentive to spend the time developing for it. And since there's no development going on, there's very little reason for people to spend so much money on it. Big circular problem that's hard to fix. Really they only way I can see this coming to an end is for the hardware to get really cheap ($200), and then have some huge powerhouse behind it who can push it and get great games on the shelves at release time.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    19. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DK1 and GearVR use the ball and stick model. GearVR is extremely low latency (even better than PC for the moment since Carmack got Samsung to allow access to hardware interfaces so they could render just before scanout reliably), so it is much better about nausea problems.

      DK2 has a camera watching your head, so you can lean around and move up,down, etc to look around objects, which GearVR is missing. At some point in the future it might be doable using the phone's camera, with or without tracking markers, but it just isn't precise enough to be productized yet.

      Sadly, though, by its very nature VR will almost never be free of nausea problems because even if it's perfect, you're going to want to do things in which the in game player moves, and you don't. Mismatch will make some people sick.

    20. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it doesn't make you sick, then it not real VR

    21. Re:What, no positional tracking? by kelemvor4 · · Score: 1

      It means tracking translation. The Gear VR tracks your head's rotation but not translation which triggers a reflex in your brain that causes nausea.

      Basically the brain knows that your head moved a certain way and what your eyes see doesn't match that. In turn, your brain decides that the only explanation is that you've been poisoned and makes you want to hurl as a defense mechanism.

      Maybe not such a bad thing. A lot of gamers drink Monster, which is similar to poison - at least in flavor.

    22. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      This isn't about frames per second but latency of each frame.

      Today most GPUs render things into a buffer, and render two-three frames ahead (double or triple buffering). Far more important, as noted by Carmack in the speech (seriously, go watch it, it's very informative) is being able to do just-in-time rendering and send it straight to the framebuffer to minimize latency.

    23. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Twinbee · · Score: 1

      I did watch it. I was pleasantly surprised to see a focus on latency and fps throughout.

      Perhaps G-Sync and a high frame rate is a simpler way to reduce latency, and then we can still keep the three frame pipeline. I don't think he mentioned G-Sync which was a surprise. JIT rendering also sounds good though.

      --
      Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
    24. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      G-sync is about syncing output of the buffer to frame rate to avoid tearing. It does nothing to latency.

      JIT rendering also made it to maxwell btw, but that's a whole different story.

      http://www.geforce.com/whats-n...

    25. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Twinbee · · Score: 1

      Gsync does help with input lag / latency. From the horse's mouth, it's mentioned numerous times: http://www.geforce.com/hardwar...

      --
      Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
    26. Re:What, no positional tracking? by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      The only way it could possibly "help latency", other than placebo effect, is helping latency vs system with vsync enabled.

      It cannot do anything to the system with vsync disabled, and having to match frame timing on display likely increases latency overhead. Monitor overhead already occupies a large chunk of the latency, and increasing it would likely increase, rather than decrease input latency.

      If you were conscious of input latency, you were already playing with vsync off. That means gsync will in fact increase your input latency if enabled by increasing latency overhead on the monitor, just to a lesser degree than vsync.

      The article in the link you provide as evidence agrees.

  4. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    When was the last time you fingered him?

  5. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by jmauro · · Score: 1

    The aqueduct?

  6. Click bait headline by An+Ominous+Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Samsung cringing? Because Carmack referenced hardware limitations of the current display technology that anyone who could follow his speech either already knows or could have gleened from reviewing the basic specs? And the display technology is still is (or is equal too) the best available in industrial quantities?

    It's not like he said "Company X's displays are so much better, it's stupid we didn't go with them." That might have induced some cringes. The actual speech? Not so much. It was interesting enough for the technical material, don't try to spoil it with melodramatics.

    1. Re:Click bait headline by Charliemopps · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In my job, I work heavily, all day long with large marketing, sales and product management departments. The parallel universe those people live in is rather astonishing. If you diverge from their line of thinking even in internal meetings, you're getting talked to by management. It's to the point that I have meetings even with external engineers and we'll have both of our sales departments on the phone preventing us from solving problems because neither of us are allowed to admit there are problems. lol

      What ends up happening is we find time to exchange email and later speak privately. I find it hilarious that engineers from two separate companies have to collude together to trick our respective Sales organizations into believing nothing was ever wrong in the first place.

    2. Re:Click bait headline by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2

      Indeed. Carmack's honesty and plain openness is a breath of fresh air where everybody is trying to get the latest "scoop" and drive clicks / hits / web traffic with the latest "corporate news".

      I miss Carmack posting on /.

    3. Re:Click bait headline by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think you missed a bit of the strategy; the sales guys don't care if something was wrong, as long as the engineers fix it. What they don't want is for THEM to be wrong. The product? Not so much....

    4. Re:Click bait headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The actual speech? Not so much. It was interesting enough for the technical material, don't try to spoil it with melodramatics."

      Welcome to the new slashdot. That's all its about here. Nothing to see. Move along.

    5. Re:Click bait headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Welcome to how slashdot has been for more than a decade

      FTFY. HAND.

    6. Re:Click bait headline by sd4f · · Score: 0

      I think a lot of the tech press have been too unforgiving with their differentiation between engineering design and industrial design. The Note 3 screen is a great example, where I really ask the question, who cares? Maybe some people from the fruity cult look at it as not holistic design that they so love, but the fact of the matter is it's early days for a reasonable attempt. Carmack in previous keynotes has made that point, previous attempts at VR were woeful. Now tech is getting good enough to have a decent go at it, which is clearly why he's on board with it. I'm sure like you pointed out, that he didn't push a competitor, but if he didn't see potential in the product, then he wouldn't be there, that's for sure.

    7. Re:Click bait headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Watch the entire video. Basically "Samsung doesn't want to go in that direction"

      As far as I am concerned... or care... The Occulus is a dead product looking for something to do.

      Likewise, Euclideon is a graphics engine looking for killer idea.

      I have a concept that can work with both of these... "minecraft" a world using Euclideon's engine, and it needs the 3D head tracking to "sculpt". The missing parts of this are having "glove" inputs, because you can't use a keyboard and mouse with something on your head.

    8. Re:Click bait headline by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 1

      Listening to the talk now, and it's just a joy to hear a great low level discussion of all these things with no marketing BS.

  7. Wow - a stream of consciousness. by randomhacks · · Score: 1

    That was an amazing video purely to watch someone talk without ever finishing a sentence or pausing for thought. It was like watching a stream of consciousness.

  8. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What have YOU done for ANYONE?

  9. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Um.... I'm not sure how to.... uh tell you... I guess. But.. uh. Fingered means something...... different..... for grown ups, sweetie.

    Maybe be more specific next time. Like with a link, or something. :)

  10. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    What, Linux distros still run fingerd? That's old geezer Unix crap for dirty greybeard hippies!

  11. Re:frost piss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fail

  12. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've pissed in their butts.

  13. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

    Ha! Good one. But which server do I finger? We don't have a "planfileserver" infrastructure like we do for gpg keys.

    As an aside, Slashdot no longer lets users paste in their public keys into their user information, which is a shame. You can see them at: http://slashdot.org/~username/...

  14. John is a good guy by J-1000 · · Score: 1

    I appreciate how he shares technical details with us even though it probably doesn't benefit him personally at all.

  15. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The finger protocol was invented in the 1970s when finger used to mean something different. They said it all the time in detective movies.

    (transitive) To identify or point out. Also put the finger on. To report to or identify for the authorities, rat on, rat out, squeal on, tattle on, turn in, to finger.

  16. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I was fingering your mom long before the 1970s, brah.

  17. Dude - the 90s called by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It asked, what have you done in the last 20 years other than working for facebook.

    1. Re:Dude - the 90s called by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He fucked your dad then had a snack.

  18. HMD is the wrong path by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

    Direct brain interface is the future, but make sure there's a Log Out option once you're inside the game.

    1. Re:HMD is the wrong path by Malizar · · Score: 2

      You might want to check for a log out option before getting inside.

    2. Re:HMD is the wrong path by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Logging out it easy, assuming you've already taken the red pill:

      Step 1: Find the nearest hard-wired telephone. :D
      Step 2: Say "Operator, please! Get me out of here, right now! Operator, I need an exit!"

    3. Re:HMD is the wrong path by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Step 3: Discover that you're screwed because sometime in the past 15 years, your phone company switched to VoIP.

      Take your phone booth time machine back to 1999, grandpa. There are no hard-wired telephones anymore.

    4. Re:HMD is the wrong path by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      Also, make sure there there's a safe way to remove the headset without killing the player due to a high-powered radiation burst, which a brilliant but psychotic game developer has devised in order to trap players inside his revolutionary virtual online game world until they can track him down and defeat him, thus allowing everyone to finally escape and re-join the real world.

      Or at least, that's what I've learned from anime.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    5. Re:HMD is the wrong path by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sword Art Online

    6. Re:HMD is the wrong path by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 1

      I liked SAO better when it was called '.hack//sign', personally.

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
    7. Re:HMD is the wrong path by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Recognizing the source of the comment is one thing, coming up with a witty reply is another.

    8. Re:HMD is the wrong path by Cabriel · · Score: 1

      Sword Art Online taught me that lesson.

  19. And this is where I bid you adieu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    fellow geeks if we were ever kindred. I've been drifting away from you for some time. You feel that being a geek is a black market queue to get a new bendable iPhone to make a certain class of people take over, you'll wear your google glass and your smart watch and you'll put your life on the cloud and wrap your eyes in VR. I haven't worked in IT in years and I don't fit into your world anymore, never will. This is where we part, not that we were ever really together. Adieu!

  20. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by quenda · · Score: 1

    Ubuntu doesn't even install finger client by default!
    But OS-X still has it, oddly.

  21. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by binarylarry · · Score: 1

    Ah I see you've received Oculus DK3.

    That one's going to make the billions back for Mr. Zuckerberg.

    --
    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  22. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well a lot of retarded people from reddit jumped over. Just look at the comments on this article. Everyone thinks they're funny.

  23. think about the doctor bills by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This is the United States of America. Getting a bone fixed can cost up to $10,000. Imagine the health complications, and doctor bills for problems with a direct brain interface? What if the immune system rejects the interface? What if bacteria colonize the neural interface? What if the body's regular nervous system atrophies from lack of use? What about the human labor in customizing the interface, for each person's unique nervous system?

    Compare that to the cost of a 9 inch high 1440p LCD, or even a potential 5760p OLED. Maybe a few thousand dollars at most. Good Human Machine Interfaces will not cause medical problems, and thus no expensive doctor bills. That is why HMI will win.

  24. Yes, they should let the PR handle it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It worked wonders for Qualcomm

  25. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by Atryn · · Score: 4, Funny

    New slogan: "Only OS-X gives you the finger!"

    --
    Come play Moral Decay!
  26. And this is where I bid you adieu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Can I haz your stuff?

  27. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    Carmack? What has he done for us lately?

    Carmack is not just riding on his past fame but still actively participating in engineering.

  28. Re:Carmack is a washed-up has-been nobody by Monoman · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure you misspelled Romero.

    --
    Keep the Classic Slashdot.
  29. Re:still fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nobody asked you. And nobody ever will, about anything, because it is impossible that any opinion you ever have could ever be worth hearing.

    Now get your sorry ass back to the Apple store, before somebody takes that place in line you've been camping for weeks.