Introducing Michael Abrash, Oculus Chief Scientist | Hacker News Reader

Introducing Michael Abrash, Oculus Chief Scientist

oculusvr.com

396 pointspolskibus148 comments

When a billionaire nerd that is "one of us" buys the VR company John Carmack is the CTO of and backs it with all the resources at his disposal I get excited. When he reunites two fathers of 3D game programming and the makers of the Quake engine I start to freak out.

On the upside we have an unlimited budget to make VR real and on the downside the team can always start again with VC money if necessary.

Saying that Oculus is John Carmack's VR company is unfavourable to those who actually brought Oculus about. Carmack was hired fairly late in Oculus' history.

Edit: You edited it now to say 'John Carmack & Co's VR company' which still doesn't make much sense. Carmack joined Oculus as a CTO almost exactly a year after Oculus had its successful Kickstarter campaign.

You don't know the history, clearly. Carmack and Luckey were working together before the concept of Occulus as a company existed at all. The first prototype went from Luckey's desk to Carmack's desk. Carmack endorsed the Kickstarter campaign publicly and created Doom 3 BFG for it. He setup a booth at E3 to demo it.

Also, all I really meant to say was "the company Carmack works at" in a shorter way. I have massive respect for Palmer Luckey.

There seems to be very little talk of Palmer Luckey here. He started this whole thing, and all anyone can talk about is Carmack. I'm not trying to disparage John Carmack, as that would be difficult considering his awesome achievements. And he certainly brings with him expertise and reputation advantages. I just hope more people understand where this all originated.

If this works out like I think it will, history will give plenty of credit to Palmer Luckey.

Carmack wrote the lens distortion shaders and found a software hack in the gyros/accelerometers to get it running at a higher hz and did his own filtering of the raw data from the sensors based on his experience building autostabilizing rocket ships.

The devkit ended up using better sensors etc. , but both Luckey and Carmack were important in making the initial unit that was in the E3 demo that helped build confidence for the kickstarter.

Yes, Carmack's demo was a priceless endorsement that legitimized Oculus. An industry legend demoing something spearheaded by someone nobody had heard of. How do you think it was reported?

  E3 2012: John Carmack’s VR headset [1]
  John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset, $500 kits available soon, video interview inside [2]
  E3 2012: John Carmack unveils virtual reality gaming headset [3]
  Hands-On With Oculus Rift, John Carmack's Virtual Reality Goggles [4]
  John Carmack's snazzy VR headset takes to kickstarter with the oculus rift [5]

Between E3 and the Kickstarter, people associated Carmack with Oculus due to the press coverage. His reputation launched the company.

This was not a case of Carmack trying to steal credit or the company, it was purely the result of his enthusiasm. It speaks well of Carmack that he took such a prominent role without concern for compensation or ownership.

[1] http://www.edge-online.com/news/e3-2012-john-carmacks-vr-hea...

[2] http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/06/06/john-carmack-is-making-a-v...

[3] http://www.t3.com/news/john-carmack-unveils-virtual-reality-...

[4] http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/725013/hands-on-with-o...

[5] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-08-01-john-carmacks-s...

And it's not just Carmack and Abrash - they also have Tom Forsynth [0] and Atman Binstock [1], two other amazing people who've been pioneers in graphics programming and VR (and AR) development! And it's very likely that Valve will soon be firing most people who worked on their VR prototype, which means that it's possible that Oculus VR picks them up as well.

It's the closest thing to a dream team for nerds: Abrash and Carmack, two of the people who completely changed an entire industry in the 90s; Luckey, the definition of a true hacker who helped revive a dying market (if there ever was one in the first place); Forsynth and Binstock, who also played a key role in many areas in the games industry; and lastly, Zuckerberg, a ruthless nerd with impossibly-deep pockets.

[0] http://home.comcast.net/~tom_forsyth/ [1] http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/welcome-atman-binstock-chief-ar...

I'm kind of curious as to why you think that Valve will be firing most of their VR team. Do you think that they have fully proven that VR is possible and done what they can without going in to production?

If I'm not mistake I believe that a handful of the VR people are also working on the steambox and controller which still has a ways to go.

Last year Valve did "mass" (relative to the size of the company and divisions) firings [0] after Jeri Ellsworth was fired. Right now it's just speculation, but I doubt Valve has either the time, money or motivation to compete against two giants, Facebook and Sony, and against the other new competitors that are starting to appear [1][2][3].

Valve's hands are already full with the SteamBox, the controller, Steam itself and however many games they have in development. But yes, you're right - some of the VR developers might simply be relocated to other projects within Valve. Who knows.

[0] http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/13/3985642/great-cleansing-at...

[1] http://www.trueplayergear.com/

[2] http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/razer-climbing-on-the-...

[3] InfinitEye: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH86II2CwdE

You say it's "very likely" that Valve will fire certain people, but when pressed your reasoning is that they fired some other people in the past and are involved in a number of projects.

That's really not responsible or honest.

But the AR guys' project was seen as a failure, or at least as a poor fit with Valve, they apparently weren't very interested in working on Valve's other projects, and there had been antagonism between them and the rest of Valve. I don't think there are similar problems in this case.

I share your enthusiasm about Abrash joining Carmack to work on the Rift.

But if I may pick nits, any billionaire -- nerd or not -- is most assuredly not "one of us". The rest of us have to worry about paying the bills, driving ourselves to our jobs, working in less-than-stellar offices, worrying about the cost of gas, food and medical bills, the education their kids receive, etc.

I'm not trying to stoke the fires of class warfare, but billionaires are not shackled for financial reasons like the rest of us. They can vacation in paradise, make cool things happen at a stroke of a pen, and if they choose to spend hours per day doing nothing but daydreaming and speculating...they can.

No, no, triple no. Wake up call here.

Some people are just extremely lucky (I'm guessing here. I hardly believe this happens).

Some people are technical geniuses, care little about the money, and end up having truckloads of them, being at the right moment with the right skill. Carmack his an example - read his writings, he's an amazingly humble person. Linus Torvalds, too, just to mention another person.

What about the rest of the billionaires?

We're talking about billions here, not just millions (!). The rest of the billionaires (must be) are A-type personalities who live for accumulating money and tearing the competition apart.

When you have such personality, and context, you never rest. Even when you're at rest; you're not on holiday, when you're on holiday. You need to be single minded and live almost single-dimensionally; being a psychopath is of great help. Steve Jobs is a perfect example. Even if we take out the personality factor, we're talking about billions here - competition is extremely fierce.

As usual, of course, I don't mean that reality is black and white or "type-3" is every billionaire.

But it's important to have a clear understanding of how this works, to avoid daydreaming of being such a person (which by the way, I would never want to be).

This is a recurring theme in HN, and the usual agreed opinion is that after having a certain amount of money (upper middle class), there's very little gain in happiness by having more money.

And by the way, any middle class person has access to the best places on earth and best experiences out there.

I don't get what point you're refuting here. Why did you start this off "No, no, and triple no. Wake up call here." That seems like a really drastic response to saying "billionaires aren't like the rest of us" — which seems to be a fairly accurate statement, no? (unless everyone here are billionaire$).

So I'm guessing you were referring to maybe a different aspect of his post?

"billionaires aren't like the rest of us"

If you feel like a person's possessions define who they are, yes, a billionaire can never be like you. Don't you think that's a little limiting?

What about the millionaire businessman you meet at a conference? What about your neighbour who earns three times as much as you do? What about your other neighbour who makes half?

I'd say you are overestimating the day-to-day worries of a typical tech employee and underestimating those of billionaire founders.

Personally, I get a small PhD scholarship, but I don't worry about paying my bills and I like my humble office much more than facebook's open space. I have savings that could last me a couple of years and for all intents and purposes I feel plenty rich. I can also take a vacation free from worries, unlike the CEO of a big company.

Anyone with no kids and a full time job can spend hours per day doing nothing but daydreaming and speculating - most americans seem to waste their leisure time watching TV. If that's what you want, nothing is stopping you. You need not wait for the billions.

The only major difference between a super-rich person and an upper-middle class employee is the freedom to quit your job and pursue other things. However, I know a lot of people who made enough money to retire and none have stopped working.

> The rest of us have to worry about paying the bills, driving ourselves to our jobs, working in less-than-stellar offices, worrying about the cost of gas, food and medical bills, the education their kids receive, etc.

No, most people do not "worry" about these things. You make it sound so dystopian.

I'm not sure what planet you're living on, but here on Earth most people do worry about those things.

Deal with them, yes. Worry, no.

Wow so you have Abrash, Carmack, Luckey together working on VR and funded by another genius (who also happens to have billions to fund it) Zuckerberg, it might happen for real this time.

Starting to feel like the VR times we are in might mimic the advancements of physics and the genius around the early 1900s.

I thought Luckey was smart to bring in Carmack then Zuckerberg has all three working for him, definitely won the game and using money in a way others can only dream.

I guess the term "genius" has lost some of it's meaning. Zuck is no genius. He created (implemented + borrowed) something which filled the right niche at the right time and rode the wave. Many could have ridden that wave; they needn't be geniuses to do so. More power to him, wish I had done it, but let's not demean true geniuses by lumping Zuck in with them.

I just hope Oculus is allowed to steer near its originally intended path. I'm not holding my breath.

If you got Carmack and Abrash working with you on cool tech while having no funding worries ever, I'd call you a genius as well. Luckey is a smart dude as well, he brought in Carmack, got this whole thing going, and is really smart + project driven for 21, builds lasers in his spare time. Zuck built an app that everyone including your mom uses, so that is also pretty impressive aside from having all those guys work for you. So all four are really geniuses or at least really smart pioneers.

With that, Facebook is now mainstream. Facebook buying Oculus just made VR mainstream again and noticed in finance. So while game developers and gamers were sold (I backed it), the mainstream remembered it from the past VR experiences which sucked. All the VR guys are in one place, well funded, attracting more to it and there is a mainstream outlet for VR (Facebook) and funding will be out in the market because of the deal. Now everyone is sold on it even if some developers and backers were surprised by it (even I felt a bit eh). I ultimately think it was a genius move.

To read Abrash tell it, Facebook's recent acquisition of Oculus VR influenced his decision by rendering virtual reality development a viable career path.

"a billionaire nerd that is "one of us""

How do you figure?

Ok, I am over being mad at Facebook. This is huge.

Abrash has been the front facing member of Valve's efforts @ VR.

His "What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be within two years" (1) paper was mind boggling as an Oculus Dev Kit owner.

This is going to be like watching the "Dream Team" come together in one place, and I'm guessing that this ends all speculation about whether or not Carmack sticks around under FB considering the collaborative history between these two.

(1) http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/Abrash%20Dev%2...

The biggest thing about the Facebook deal is that Oculus will have hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the hardware they dream of, not the hardware they have to settle for.

They can design custom chips and displays and get it done faster than they would if they'd waited to bootstrap themselves up to it.

FB can/will pour a ton of money into custom (vs off-the-shelf) hardware. And FB is better than most investors in that they won't be looking for an immediate payoff, so Oculus can do things right instead of too fast.

It's win/win/win, outside of the little kneejerk firestorm reaction. That will fade.

Except that is's possible that the custom hardware that you speak of will end up costing more money as an end user wanting to buy one of these devices. The hardware that they were using was off the shelf, high volume hardware and thus not as pricey. Just a thought

There's been talk about Zuckerberg wanting to use Facebook's backing to release the Rift at lost cost[1]. That's a little scary in its own right, as it implies that Facebook may be looking to turn the Rift into something closer to a console.

[1] http://ca.ign.com/articles/2014/03/26/oculus-on-joining-face...

You should write them an email letting them know about this as soon as possible. They've probably all forgotten that keeping costs down is desirable, and you're just the person to remind them.

Facebook is not Apple. Even Google is not Apple, as we watch time and time again Google failing at hardware and customer service. Neither of which, Facebook has any experience at. Nor are Carmack and Abrash hardware guys (that is, manufacturing rather than tinkering). Let's be just a bit realistic here. They have an uphill battle. Facebook also has no game development team (which I would include 3d modelers, world designers, etc.) There are a ton of missing variables from this equation still.

Money buys people, but it doesn't create miracles. I was excited when Abrash joined Valve, but nothing came of that.

You are right that Apple is at a different level in hardware, but you can point to a bunch of big hardware success stories for google, starting with servers and data centers, google mapping cars, and most relevantly their nexus android phones.

I have a great many criticisms of this deal but how many people would be better candidates for the role of a CTO managing the meeting of new 3D technology and hardware? A CTO has to cover all technology bases, not just hardware, so you can't just name some chip designer with no management experience. Carmack has been optimizing game engines with assembly since the dawn of the industry and is still hands-on having very recently been optimizing game engines on smartphones. He was also head of Armadillo aerospace where they had enormous amounts of custom machining and microcontroller work, you can deride that as "tinkering" if you like.

Google's work specifying and building the Nexus lines, the Chromebooks and their own custom motherboards for their servers, Google glass, their self-driving cars and their recent acquisition of the leading robotics companies also demonstrates how much hardware knowledge Google has. So you are wrong there too.

Facebook has been leading the open compute project and has significantly more hardware resources than people might think just using their web application. The point of buying the company is to get all the technology anyway, let's not forget in all this that they have a working prototype.

I'll agree they both have bad customer service though. But as a victim of Apple's bad hardware and customer service - they sold me an iPhone that had broken reception and didn't replace it for anyone outside of the US where there was a lawsuit - I would argue Apple doesn't really beat them there either.

> where they had enormous amounts of custom machining and microcontroller work, you can deride that as "tinkering" if you like.

I will deride it all day, because it's not manufacturing. In manufacturing consumer products you must worry about things like margins, supply chains, and regional regulations. Oculus Rift is going to be a consumer device. So why the hell are you trying to compare apples and doorknobs here? I wasn't knocking Carmack or Abrash. I was telling you factual information. They are not the same people that will turn Oculus Rift into a consumer product. At all. Facebook will have to hire more people and bring in more outsider knowledge. That is what I'm saying.

> demonstrates how much hardware knowledge Google has. So you are wrong there too.

Nexus is just rebranded Asus/LG/Samsung devices. In fact, my Asus tablet has more features and is cheaper than its Nexus sibling. Chromebook came out and was priced higher than a MacBook. Which is proof enough that Google doesn't understand the hardware market. Who wants to buy a locked-down dumb terminal laptop, when you can get the real deal for cheaper? Google Glass? Did anyone really take that seriously? Self-driving cars? Didn't know I could go to my local auto dealer and get one.

My point is, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Wrong market predictions, wrong retail pricing, bad supply chain, terrible marketing. And you really expect that Carmack+Abrash = VR products for sale soon? Realistically, we're not going to see anything for at least 5 years. Conservatively, 10. And Carmack and Abrash are a few pieces in a giant puzzle.

> they sold me an iPhone

That's nice.

>>>"The biggest thing about the Facebook deal is that Oculus will have hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the hardware they dream of, not the hardware they have to settle for."

I didn't realize this was public knowledge, yet you certainly state it as if it was obvious. Do you have evidence of them having to settle for lame hardware that $75M of investment couldn't get them? Where did this news surface? Sounds interesting.

> We can make custom hardware, not rely on the scraps of the mobile phone industry. That is insanely expensive, think hundreds of millions of dollars. More news soon. - Palmer [1]

[1]- http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of...

There have been a few mentions of this both in videos and posts. Here's a relevant bit from a post by Palmer Luckey on Reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of...

>We can make custom hardware, not rely on the scraps of the mobile phone industry. That is insanely expensive, think hundreds of millions of dollars. More news soon.

http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21lu33/introducing_m...

>You are right that screens with big lenses in front of your eyes is essentially a brute force design, a design that relies on utilizing the scraps of the mobile phone industry to provide a good VR experience at the cost of performance and form factor. Doing better requires insane resources, which we now have.

There's another thing from Snowcrash I've been thinking about - realistic faces. The most exclusive club in the Metaverse was The Black Sun and what made it special was that the avatars had extremely realistic, life-like expressions, enabling them to visually express emotions and thus enabling a higher form of communication (correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't read it in a decade).

So if we buy into the notion that social presence in VR worlds will be big, somebody's going to have to build this. The technology exists, but it looks very awkward: https://www.fxguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/HBT-VFXpr...

Not only does that have to be translated into a consumer product, but you need to capture someone's face while they're wearing the VR headset, which makes it even harder. Since VR headsets already touch your face, I would imagine the product would have to be some kind of extension of that - a larger contact area filled with sensors that reconstruct your expression perfectly.

High Fidelity [1] (Second Life v2) does this already. It's still early beta, but they've got the ability to map a user's face in real time with enough data-density to transmit emotion, and facial characteristics good enough to recognize a person by their avatar.

You are correct, that currently the same camera that does the facial analysis (macbook camera) precludes the VR headset - so you either get to see another in full VR, or you get to transmit your expression in HD. The device to do both is not yet here.

[1] http://highfidelity.io/

The founder of Second Life gave a live demonstration of this last night at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality meetup. I didn't realize how important capturing these small facial gestures was until I saw it myself.

Link?

Facebook has thousands of pictures of our faces under a variety of lighting conditions. It would be exciting (or scary, depending on your point of view) to see that data, combined with sensors on the headset itself, to generate realistic-looking face models in the virtual space.

I just came here to post this. They also recently hired Yann LeCun to head up their AI Lab and also published a ground-breaking face recognition paper. So, they have the data, and they have the people.

I recently came across this effort to map human faces to avatar faces: https://www.facerig.com

I still can't believe that that's real-time from just a webcam.

This won't work as-is without cameras inside the VR goggles, of course, but details, details...

I remember Hiro's ex-girlfriend Juanita explaining that when she designed the facial-expression system, she used him and herself as the models. So they are they only two people who have completely honest, natural expressions in VR.

Go watch 'capturing avatar'

The Kinect already attempts to reconstruct your expression with the IR/image overlay. It's not the most accurate, but that could just be the software.

beautiful PR execution by the Oculus/FB teams. They knew this acquisition would anger members of the community, and they timed this hire/announcement so as to quiet the predicted backlash. Brilliant execution.

To squash the backlash against Abrash leaving Valve, they should time the announcement of the next iteration of Half Life.

I think it will do some good on the dev side of things (ie: maybe Notch reconsiders), but for gamers I don't think Abrash has the requisite cachet to overcome their distaste for FB.

That said, when the consumer Rift is released I'm sure they'll fall over themselves to go buy it so it's probably not a serious concern.

Actually, no, this is just the timing with which things happened.

Mike Abrash still worked at Valve last week.

So you think this just all happened in the last week?

Not an explicit PR move, but Carmack is explicitly asking for people to blog about their concerns re FB/Oculus, says he'll read them. He's looking for coherent articulation of risks, not kneejerk negativity, of course.

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/449594122936922112

If Michael Abrash is happy, then John Carmack is happy.

If those two are happy, HN should be happy.

Maybe this Facebook thing won't be so bad after all.

It's almost like people need to give decisions some time in order to actually see the results instead of jumping to the conclusion that it'll be a failure.

most of the response wasn't concluding failure but fearing the future. i think many people think VR is too important a technology ("The Final Platform") to be in the hands of a single corporate interest. we'll see i guess if that fear is turns out to have been well placed.

One of the things that made me upset about the initial announcement about Facebook acquiring Oculus was that I wasn't exactly sure if it was one of those "almost hostile takeover" where the main share holders want to cash out and don't care if the company is going to hell.

Knowing that the people inside the company who are going to build the technology not only agree with the changes but welcome them with open arms is reassuring.

Facebook would have been pretty stupid to buy Oculus without the entire core team consenting to be acquired.

This shouldn't change your view point either way if you hated the fb acquisition or were fine with it.

What I mean is the people generally angry about the acquisition was not due to the personnel but Facebook itself so this should change nothing. All this shows was the Oculus was already going to get Abrash and that Facebook decided this would be better to announce after they got acquired.

I am glad someone else sees it this way. Some people are too damn wishy-washy. All the things people were griping about 4 days ago when FB bought OR could still happen.

I still dont want FB owned hardware in my house :shrug:

Man, I'm now simultaneously more excited than ever about Oculus and more fearful that FB will do something to screw up this chance.

I'm choosing optimism.

I agree, in that I don't know what will happen but it will be big and glorious, and something will now happen - there's too many great minds and too much money in this now for it just to flub out quietly.

In every OR announcement recently I see references to the SnowCrash Metaverse. Before we all start to rent shipping containers and become the 'greatest sword fighters in the world', I worry if this fictional ideal isn't a distraction to getting this done or not. Before we can buy OR consumer kits that work as well as the potential seems to hint at (and yes I have tried and was amazed by Crystal Cove) then it seems such a long and lofty goal. It feels like Physics 301 class entrants aiming for Warp capability or something.

It would take something like a Facebook userbase and scale, the fathers of 3D game programming and a convergence of high definition mobile consumer electronics to all come together at one time for it to happen.

Oh.

You can see why games people are irritated. I'm getting a strong impression that at this point that Oculus is moving away from being a games oriented company.

If I was a game studio building a VR game with an Oculus kit, I'd be continuing to work on it, but I'd be calling Sony and trying to get in line for a Morpheus.

They have Michael Abrash and John Carmack working at the same company. I don't see how 'games people' won't be super excited.

Yeah, our office full of games people just went insane.

Abrash was working on VR at Valve, and was kind of my only hope for VR after Oculus went FB. Now my VR hopes are crushed. Oh well, maybe next decade.

>> "Abrash was working on VR at Valve, and was kind of my only hope for VR after Oculus went FB. Now my VR hopes are crushed."

You think Facebook spent $2bn to stop Occulus working on VR??

I think the perception here is not that FB will stop VR, but that they will ruin it. This is possible in a variety of ways including them making it into a walled garden similar to the iOS or blocking progress of competitors through patents or anti-competitive practices.

Personally what I want is something that once I buy is completely free from the company that I bought it from. I.e. an open system that I can control. I don't see such a product coming from a company like FB, but I could be wrong.

I mean, I'm much more worried it's a datagrab.

Can you imagine how much Facebook would like a recording of your facial expressions while you have a private talk with your friends? Or when you look at ads?

Setting aside the fact that I don't think Oculus has any plans for getting facial expression data (can their current IR camera even get that info?), what exactly do you think Facebook would do with your facial expressions?

Characterize relationships, track response to various types of advertising.

The standard things Facebook does with their data.

There are layers of stupid in objections to Facebook but "something something watching your cameras" is by far the dumbest.

Not only does the Oculus positional tracking camera not work like that (and can't work like that since you know, you have an Oculus Rift on your face) but no one has managed to give a statement on what they think the value of that data would be.

How about a constant, always-running gaze map. To see which ads grab attention most effectively, perhaps.

Uh, I can think of useful data analysis to run on that.

Both to characterize the feelings associated with relationships (which is data that Facebook would like to know), and sentiment analysis for various adverts or other things.

For example, Facebook could use a virtual room for people looking to interact, and then place ad objects within the room - and rate your responses to them, in order to profile you for advertisers, and figure out what kind of placements generate the least interruption or most positive association.

Further, you're only talking about the current gen Oculus technology, and not anything about what Facebook might (speculatively) deveop going forward.

The obvious path (seeing other virtual worlds) is to generate some method of putting realistic gestures in to the experience, which I highly doubt they'll never attempt to do.

I'm much more okay with a stand-alone thing doing that, than anything tied to Facebook's environment, because I believe Facebook is a fundamentally exploitative company.

The Oculus camera doesn't work like that right now, but the social-related uses Mark Zuckerberg has been talking about for VR definitely would require facial expression tracking.

VR is going to happen, it just might not be what you wanted. This "next decade" talk is bs, this hasn't set "back" VR, it has maybe altered the path that VR ends up taking. But it definitely accelerated it, whatever that path ends up being.

I'm nervous that in the long run this sets up VR to be a closed platform, but I guess we'll see. Maybe a closed platform is better than no platform at all, which might have been the outcome if someone with deep pockets never bought oculus.

> it just might not be what you wanted

In this case "you" means "video game enthusiasts." Most non-gamers that I know are not even aware of Oculus and they're not even thinking of VR. The gamers were the people behind these projects. The gamers are the ones who don't want to be spied upon in order to be served targeted adds that they don't care to see.

Perhaps, years from now, my wife will be logging onto FB, buying Farmville credits, and shopping for home decor with her Oculus Rift, but that's not what its original supporters envisioned. It's certainly not something that will be mainstream next year.

I don't know, I can't say what FB intends to do with VR, but I can reason that they want to please their shareholders, that they only know one way to make money thus far, and that money is what drives them. That's fine, nothing wrong with it, it's just not (as you say) the outcome we wanted.

>no platform at all, which might have been the outcome if someone with deep pockets never bought oculus

That seems like a leap or, at least, an assertion made in such non-comital terms as to be rendered meaningless. I'm with you on the fear (anticipation) of a closed platform, I just don't buy the addendum. If you couldn't tell, the whole FB acquisition issue is not sitting well with me.

Why is Carmack and Abrash working together troublesome to you no matter who owns the company? Do you think they would sign on to a project that was not going to be related to gaming? Do you think they would lend their skills and names to a product that was going to flop?

With the announcement of Facebook buying Oculus, I can see the concern. With this announcement though, I would take it to be a great sign that things are better for Oculus.

they would lend their skills and names to a product that was going to flop

Sure why not, Carmack has always focused on tech for tech's sake. ID's games are almost always panned for everything but the tech. Abrash is similarly oriented. I have no doubt they will produce great VR hardware and software, but that still leaves FB in charge of the artistic direction. Throw in a couple of patents and it will be 2030 before another company can get really competitive.

Their games may have been "panned" (I don't know...I don't follow the gaming press) but clearly bazillions of people found them enjoyable enough to cough up the cash (the only "review" that really matters).

I mean, Carmack was rich enough to fund his own space program.

Abrash worked at Valve which has pretty much exclusively made critically acclaimed titles, but that had less to do with Abrash's artistic direction. Carmack made most of his money from his tech, not from the games. Id games after Quake 3 maybe broke even or turned enough profit to give employees a modest bonus, but were never very popular. (The quickly dwindling) Id fanboys were pretty much the only people buying their games after 2005 (Doom 3).

Id (and Carmack) made most of their money from engine licensing. As Abrash mentions in this post, even Valve licensed the Quake engine code -- you can imagine how that must have made them so much more money than the couple hundred thousand copies of Quake 4 sold if they had any decent licensing business model.

A vast majority of capital-class game companies over a decade old that are still alive now, make/made almost all their money from anything but the games they designed/developed -- but instead from engines (Valve, Epic, Crytek, Id), sales platforms (Valve), publishing (EA, Activision), etc. Blizzard is more or less the only exception surviving almost solely on direct revenue from the games they've developed (mostly just WoW, although all their games are very well-loved).

So please don't jump to the conclusion that people like Carmack make the money to launch rockets from selling Doom sequels. The game design industry is not nearly that lucrative, even if the game tech one is moderately so.

Wait: so you're claiming that there's no money in selling games, but somehow the people selling games for no money can give lots of money to the people who wrote the engine?

How does that work?

It is about like selling pickaxes to miners during the gold rush. There are hits that bring in a lot of money. That money turns around and goes out the doors for fancy tools. Those tools are then setup somewhere where there isn't any gold and you end up a poor fool. As an example Ion Storm probably paid ID a few million for their id tech licenses, produced a couple of hits and a couple of failures. The failures were big enough to kill the company.

Yes and no. It's still too early to tell if Oculus VR will ditch or give less priority to the gaming aspects of the Rift. These are all knee-jerk reactions, and they are unwarranted. Carmack himself says not to worry[0] about the Facebook acquisition, and I trust him.

Considering that Oculus VR is hiring industry veterans like Abrash, Carmack, Forsynth, Binstock, et al. I'd expect them to be even more focused. These are all people that have worked on big projects, some of which have failed (Abrash and Forsynth worked on the failed Intel project Larrabee, for example) and some of which have been quite successful (Carmack's tremendous history with graphics engines, the working VR prototype from Valve). They are focused and you can see from this blog post/announcement that they are extremely excited about the project.

Another thing is, Sony's Morpheus, at least right now, will work only on the PS4. The PS4's hardware will be "outdated" by the time the Morpheus is released, if it isn't already. The Rift provides more freedom to the developers from what we've seen, and given the history of the Oculus VR employees, with their openness about their goals and projects, it's going to be more favorable for the developers in the long run than working with Sony's closed system.

[0] https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/449598224156745729

If "games people" are irritated, then it's only because they are so short-sighted that games are all they can think about. The evolution of Oculus' position is a reflection of the fact that VR is poised to be an incredibly important technology in every field, not just games.

Games will still be a hugely important part of VR, just like they're a hugely important part of computing in general, but it isn't a zero-sum game: The application of computers to non-gaming tasks drives improvements that feed back into gaming, and vice versa. Imagine if computers had only ever been used for games, and not for science, business, communication, etc. Do you think you would have anything like the kinds of games we have now? We wouldn't. We probably wouldn't have progressed much past Pong.

Hell, the entire resurgence of interest in VR was only made possible by technology developed for mobile phones, which weren't intended as a gaming platform, and whose "casual" games are generally viewed with disdain by hardcore gamers. Yet without this non-gaming platform, VR would still be in the doldrums.

And if you think Sony are going to forgo an opportunity to make billions in profit from general-purpose VR in order to please "games people", then you're either crazy or extremely susceptible to marketing.

I just don't understand this sentiment. Literally overnight Oculus went from "wouldn't it be cool if they pulled it off?" to strapping Carmack and Abrash to a rocket with unlimited fuel.

If Abrash and Carmack leave, ok, cry us all river. But as of right now this looks like the dream team just got dreamier and just got a mountain of cash and freedom.

First and foremost, everyone's priorities should be ensuring the success of the VR industry; Oculus is basically the company to do that. Sony will do their best with console hardware, but Oculus will set the pace for what's top of the line for consumers. If Facebook ever steps in and does something the [developer] community abhors, it should already be at the point where VR has had success and there will be competition. I'm super excited to see Abrash at Oculus; I just hope this doesn't mean Valve's slowing down on their work. Valve's been working for a vendor-agnostic API/configuration for these devices in their Steamworks APIs and I really hope that we don't end up fragmented by varying vendor-specific APIs.

I think it's awesome Carmack and Abrash are working together again. I read "Masters of Doom" back in the day, and it totally rocked my mind and took me back to a time when I was too young to realize just how impactful Carmack was on the industry that I enjoyed as a kid.

I just wouldn't have predicted that their comeback to the limelight would be working for Facebook. In my eyes, they were "bigger" than that (obviously not monetarily). They "meant" more to me. This is all subjective stuff I realize, and yes I've heard a zillion times "how good it is for VR", but it kind of indirectly gives a message that the best thing a genius who is already capable of changing the world can do is work for Facebook instead of do their own thing.

Call me a softy, but something just warms my heart when I see smart people stand out on their own, unswayed by the massive "power monoliths" surrounding them, and STILL kick ass. That's what Facebook did! And that was awesome! I just hope that spirit of entrepreneurship doesn't fade, and that geniuses know their power lies within themselves — not in deep pockets of any company.

Congrats to all involved though — I can only imagine what kind of crazy office days are ahead. The sequel to "Masters of Doom" is yet to be written.

Tesla worked for Edison, still made great things. Who you work for rarely changes who you are as a person if you already know who you are. Just now they have funding and lots of momentum. I think people fear Facebook owning it as scary because they know it will go somewhere with that much behind it rather than it not happening.

>>>" Who you work for rarely changes who you are as a person if you already know who you are"

Quite true.

>>> " I think people fear Facebook owning it as scary because they know it will go somewhere with that much behind it rather than it not happening."

I don't really understand this sentence. Also, to be clear, I don't fear Facebook owning anything (to me that seems pointless), I was just more surprised by Carmack's/Abrash's choice —but of course its only surprising when you don't know the details that occurred leading up to it, and the real thing that made their decision. Perhaps there was an offer they couldn't refuse, and so they jumped on it. People make it sound like Oculus wouldn't have continued without Facebook though, which seems odd to me.

>> "Just now they have funding and lots of momentum."

This is the point I don't get. I hear this echo'd by everyone, but correct me if I'm wrong, didn't they raise some $75M+? So is the point everyone is making that to properly do VR, we need more than that ? Did they not have enough resources before?

(I don't know the answer to this, just curious)

Agreed with your message sorry if it seemed contrary, just mentioning a couple different points.

On Facebook, it was intensely surprising, igniting the internet. However, when I looked at it further I saw it being red hot in gaming previously (I was a backer) with huge excitement but the last mile question still existed, how does VR become mainstream? Well Facebook is hugely mainstream now and after the announcement not only Facebook crowd heard about it but the financial community / wall street. So now we have some serious momentum behind VR that was always waning in the past and may have had trouble gaining in mainstream, now in full growth mode.

Everyone under 40-50 at least if not more has been dreaming about this since they were kids so the product base is untapped really but desired. Since Facebook bought it, I think people realize it is kind of going 'mainstream' and fear where it might end up. I say high tide rises all boats. All industries can benefit and it is now 100% mainstream backed/aware with Facebook, and investors interested, the gamers and developers were already on board.

$75m for something like a mainstream culture change and the many products, apps, games etc that need to be funded to make it happen is not enough. Plus you needed to pay the very talented people away from their already winning efforts to play. A game company can easily spend $50m on a single MMO or not even ship (well at least a few years ago).

I think hardware is only part of the picture. Who knows maybe even an oculus console / device / etc that Facebook will leverage into devices. I think people are still thinking small and not looking 5-10 down where billions will be needed... and billions more earned.

Facebook buying Oculus brought VR's groove back to the mainstream.

Wow, this is awesome news!

Michael and John are reunited... I mean, recall in the Graphics Programming Black Book, when Michael starts off in the introduction with, "What was it like working with John Carmack on Quake? Like being strapped onto a rocket during takeoff – in the middle of a hurricane." [1]

Plus, Michael's quote from the announcement, "I now fully expect to spend the rest of my career pushing VR as far ahead as I can." Great things are ahead!

If you've missed Michael's writings on VR, you are in for a real treat:

Why Virtual Reality is Hard (And Where It Might Be Going):

PDF:

http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/MAbrash%20GDC2...

PowerPoint:

http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/MAbrash%20GDC2...

Two Possible Paths into the Future of Wearable Computing: Part 1 – VR

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/two-possible-paths-int...

Two Possible Paths into the Future of Wearable Computing: Part 2 – AR

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/two-possible-paths-int...

When it comes to resolution, it's all relative

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/when-it-comes-to-resol...

Latency – the sine qua non of AR and VR

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/latency-the-sine-qua-n...

Raster-Scan Displays: More Than Meets The Eye

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/raster-scan-displays-m...

Game Developers Conference and space-time diagrams

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/game-developers-confer...

Why virtual isn't real to your brain

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-virtual-isnt-real-...

Why virtual isn't real to your brain: judder

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-virtual-isnt-real-...

Down the VR rabbit hole: Fixing judder

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/down-the-vr-rabbit-hol...

[1] http://twimgs.com/ddj/abrashblackbook/gpbbintr.pdf

dude, thanks for all this good stuff.

His talk on Persistence in VR was very informative for me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-2dQoeqVVo

I've checked Wikipedia to augment my knowledge of all things Michael Abrash, and came across this quote of Gabe Newell:

been trying to hire Michael Abrash forever. [...] About once a quarter we go for dinner and I say 'are you ready to work here yet?

So between Gabe and John, Michael could probably be dining for free every day of the week ;)

Carmack also had to hound Abrash to come work for Id for over a year after finally meeting him in person (Carmack had long respected Abrash for his articles).

http://www.jagregory.com/abrash-black-book/#foreword

The thing about Abrash, is not only is he brilliant, when he writes about hugely complicated things, he does so in a way that makes the reader feel smarter too.

That is an amazing gift to have.

Not just feel smarter. I learned assembly language and rasterization from his Dr. Dobbs articles.

EDIT> Man, I can still smell those magazines, or maybe that's just the basement smell.

That was a very nicely written piece and he had me going until this part: "We're on the cusp of what I think is not The Next Big Platform, but rather simply The Final Platform – the platform to end all platforms"

The problem is that under FB, this will end up being the metafaceverse.com platform, that you can only access under their umbrella, just as with the current FB "platform". And you will be subject to their terms and conditions within their walled garden both as a user and a developer.

That's not the kind of platform the internet needs. This won't be another WWW but another AOL.

Yes because I'm sure the Oculus Rift was the only VR system that can or ever will ever be developed, and now Facebook is just going to ruin everything!

And also somehow - and you don't say how - they'll (1) invent a completely new proprietary Displayport/HDMI connector just to keep people from using the Oculus Rift with other things and (2) then go to the trouble of locking out the positional sensors as well all so they can, apparently, lock-in people to a platform and experience which - and this is the really important part - doesn't actually exist yet, and has yet to prove its profitability in anyway.

Well all these threads are just pure speculation anyway. My point was that he was hinting at a Facebook Platform style initiative that is very different than just making an awesome VR headset. That's not to say there won't still be value in the hardware outside of the FB ecosystem, I was just trying to call out that particular aspect of what may come of this deal besides $$ to drive HW development.

Yea but isn't the idea of VR fundamentally flawed ? I mean I can imagine how presence feels like magic when you're just sitting still looking around, but is it really possible to move your avatar around without breaking presence ? I mean your body won't feel the centripetal force, nor the tactile sensations so it seems like any movement at all would break the illusion.. and if presence is broken then you might as well just be playing a FPS on a nice monitor.

This is great for Oculus.

Doesn't change a my feelings toward Facebook one bit. They could wake up from their drunken bender tomorrow, say "We bought what?" and Oculus would be dead beyond any hope of resurrection by Monday.

If it was anyone except Facebook, I would feel optimistic.

It's like Microsoft buying Apple. You know the first thing they would is burn that business to ground and dance gleefully in the ashes while their lawyers geared up to sue everyone in the world.

I am now waiting for the Zen of Oculus Programming.

That made me smile, thanks. [1]

[1] 'Zen of Assembly Language', Michael Abrash

Squeeeeeeee! Ultimate social proof.

It was John Carmack who sold me on the Oculus Dev Kit 1, now this.

I like William Gibson's comment about this article: https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/449650461881008128

This is great timing and should settle the community after the uproar about the FB acquisition this week.

It seems as though Valve has been fairly hush-hush about their VR ongoings throughout what I'll call "Oculus' rising", so I'm curious for more detail as to what went on internally at Valve with VR, and if Abrash joining Oculus means more about their VR efforts and future (i.e. is Valve done even trying to build something? Is some other partnership brewing between the two?)

The comments on this thread make me happy. Shows that the HN interest in Oculus and the Facebook FUD feelings are cooing from a genuine place, the same place that made so many peep kickstart Oculous in the first place: people want this to exist and be as cool as it promises to be.

This shows even more than Valve should've done its own VR headset. Now they lost this guy.

Perhaps when you have an effective monopoly on PC game sales you don't care who does R&D on peripherals and hardware.

I don't think that's a good longterm strategy. The only way to go from there is down.

Down in market share, but you still get to take advantage of the growth of the whole market, and without the big risk of trying to be the instigator of a hardware revolution.

Right and I feel like Valve has a hard time doing hardware projects thanks to their structure. Hard to add lots of employees, and especially hard to have low level employees doing tedious tasks. It seems like both of those need something more hierarchical.

They were working on one, he was building it.

Valve is not interested in hardware beyond what's absolutely necessary to start up their Linux ecosystem.

Initially I was a bit perplexed/dismayed when Facebook purchased Oculus. The news that JC and MA are both now in the same company again? /me shuffles over to buy some FB...

Perfect move on multiple levels.

In the same way I thought look to John Carmack for any signs of trouble [0], I can look at Abrash being signed as a sign that everything is fine.

On a related note, I always get a kick out of this Amazon review of Abrash's book by Carmack [1].

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7469414

1: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2TWZFSQZ4RYLJ

I still love that book. Anybody wanting to learn what low-level graphics programming was like in the days of the 386, 486, and Pentium should buy that book yesterday (or view the free online version http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/graphics-p...).

Hopefully everyone on HN knows who Michael Abrash is AND has a copy of "Zen of Assembly Language."

Not only is this amazing news, but this is a PR master-stroke on the part of Occulus/Facebook.

Suddenly the recent announcement of a Seattle Oculus office makes perfect sense...

Wow, I wonder what Valve is going to do. Maybe time to buy back the augmented reality tech they squandered by firing Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson?

I'm excited about these two working together, but this now reminds of when Zynga hired many industry titans.

I initially read this as "Michael Arrington, Oculus Chief Scientist". That was an amusing double take.

I think that answers the question on how serious Zuckerberg is about letting Oculus have their way.

On a side note, this is just fantastically written announcement. Abrash is a masterful storyteller.

This is the beginning of the golden era again. I will cry.

Just at the right time after the Facebook debacle.

What a coincidence.

No-one's pretending it's a coincidence, I think. Oculus had already said that one benefit of the FB acquisition was that it would allow them to hire people they hadn't been able to get before, while in the OP Abrash implies that he hadn't been willing to join Oculus because he wasn't convinced that it could survive without more capital.

Behold, HN was invaded by Oculus!

where is notch now ?

This doesn't change any of the points Notch made in his statement. They are all still valid concerns.

WOW....I can't remember when a blog post made me so excited about the future of tech.

In one fell-swoop, all the naysayers about the FB acquisition were proven wrong.

Love it!

It still doesn't change the fact that it's owned by a company that many despise and want nothing to do with, no matter how shiny their product may be.

I don't think anyone said FB was going to buy it and kill it. The fear, which is still valid, is that FB will turn it into a data grabbing, ad-deliverance product that's useless unless you're online and logged into your FB account.

...like Google.

I imagine plenty of the people peeved about the acquisition are also not Glass fanatics.

You don't need a facebook account to use Facebook Messenger, Parse, Instagram, or Whatsapp. I don't understand why people are worried about needing one for the oculus rift.

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