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Comment by nrp | Hacker News Reader

No, John Carmack is developing software for the Oculus RIFT being developed by Palmer Luckey. http://oculusvr.com/?page_id=2

It is a pretty amazing piece of hardware though. Over 90 degree field of view for $500, rather than the $10000+ it still costs from anywhere else.

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It's been, what, 17+ years since I bought my Virtual I/O iGlasses? Amazing how long it takes some technologies to catch on, if ever. The RIFT is certainly an improvement (1280×800 vs 640x480); we'll see if the "visual acuity" twist and improved tracking gives VR the push it needs. Hopefully Carmack (and if anyone can, it's him) can solve whatever the limiting nuance is.

Then again, the Newton came out around the same time, and took just as long to be reborn in a viable "killer app" form (iPad). Between Carmack, RIFT, and Google Glass - with "smartphone" power making the needed CPU cycles portable - maybe we'll finally see VR happen.

ETA: "wireless" is very important. Even if the host CPU is just a few feet away, either it must be wireless or on the user. Getting tangled in wiring is really annoying. Trust me.

I get that augmented reality needs to be portable for most applications, I'm not so sure VR needs portable CPU power.

Other than that I agree with you.

"It’s worth noting that the prototype Carmack is demoing wasn’t made by him, but by another Texan builder of VR headsets. It’s using the same tech and principles as Carmack’s own version, which was unfortunately unable to make the trip to E3."

It sounds like he is making his own headset as well. The demo was not on his, though.

That was my impression. It sounds like he is really just looking at all options to figure out what does and does not work and why. To that extent, he is building and modifying hardware to experiment while also working with manufacturers.

That's just one of the many HMD's that Carmack has played with and hacked on extensively. It's quite clear from the interview that Carmack has done quite a bit of hardware hacking as well as software development.

sensics p-sight was the best available last time I cared to look, in the $100,000+ range =/

http://sensics.com/products/head-mounted-displays/pisight-ul...

the trouble with stereoscopic curved displays seems to be keeping them calibrated to your eyes properly, slight shifts of the head clamp messes things up pretty badly

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