Hacker News Reader

Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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...

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com