Where Carmack Goes Next

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Posted by Hemos on Tuesday November 23, 1999 @12:43AM from the with-the-end-of-q3 dept.

JayZee writes "The guys at Shugashack have word on John Carmack's plans now that Quake3 is finished. He's going to be looking into cyberspace virtual realities, and even better he's going to be working on open source projects like glx much more! " Well, that's a nice mix: Free Software projects and realizing cyberspace realities, combined with a man who can make them happen.

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way to go carmack! by md_doc · 1999-11-22 20:13 · Score: 4

First off for those people thinking carmack is selling out and not going to create another game... your on drugs. Carmack is one of the fastest and best programmers out there. Did everyone forget that GLquake was created in one day on a bet that he could not port quake over to using OpenGL in one day?

Carmack just sees things different then everyone else and he wants to see if its possible to do some pretty sweat stuff. The really awesome thing that no one is even noticing is that carmack and id have million of "followers" if you will. With carmack doing some side work on opensoure projects this means only good news for the world of opensource because now the people who are hacking quake and quake2 and quake3 might think about getting involved in some opensource stuff which will be nice. Also note that carmack loves to do research and loves to just go and hide away from everything and everyone and just code for days and weeks even on things he finds interesting... its definitly fun to do if you can find the time to get away.

Good luck with research carmack can't wait to see what you come up with. It always ends up being exciting.

--MD--

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--MD--
Re:More Open Source than we give him credit by John+Carmack · 1999-11-23 03:20 · Score: 5

There have been a few things that didn't have prior art that probably could have been gotten past a patent examiner -- constant Z perspective texturing in DOOM, surface caching in Q1, and the overbright gamma table stuff to trade range for precision in Q3, for example. The patent issue came up at Id a few times until a made it perfectly clear that if the company pursued any patents, I would leave. John Carmack
Re:Off the rails at last! by John+Carmack · 1999-11-23 03:34 · Score: 5

Hey, >I didn't say "virtual reality"... I tend to agree with your assessment. VR is a term loaded with high-enthusiasm / low-results connotations. We have worked with a few VR companies in the past, and I have always found them to not have finishing ability. So much of the VR world (and much other academic style research) is high concept, but sketchy on the details. Most VR experiences are heavy on the "You are in a virtual world!!!!", but don't spend too much time on exactly what you are supposed to be doing there. Can you poke and prod to find interesting things? What happens when someone pushes you? Can you dodge something effectively? Are the controls linear, or integrated over time? etc. I think that one of my strengths is a blend of idealism and pragmatism that has resulted in good results over the years. In any case, of the half dozen things I listed, I am clearly not going to be able to do all of them, so it may be a moot point... John Carmack