News Carmack joins Oculus Rift team

Id co-founder John Carmack has taken a full time CTO role working on the Oculus Rift.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2013/08/08/carmack-joins-oculus-rift-team/1

 

I await the ultimate 3d experience where each eye gets a 4k stream

 

Yeah that'll be awesome...in 2030 when GPU's can run it.

 

By that time we will just be plugging a wire into the back of our heads

 

HAH! 4K is nothing when it comes to trying to fool human visual acuity. Spread over even the Rift's 110°, that's only 1/2 a pixel per arcminute, which doesn't even beat regular acuity let alone hyperacuity, or some of the more esoteric tricks the human visual system pulls to beat a naive view of the eye's Nyquist limit. Check Capability of the Human Visual System for a good intro. From the summary, you need 1 pixel per 0.5 arcseconds in good lighting to be truly imperceptible compared to reality. Over even the Rift's 110°, that's horizontally 792000 pixels.

And worse, you need to get the framerate up to way above 60fps to prevent a plethora of artifacts when moving your eyes or head, though ligthboost-style backlight flashing mitigates this somewhat, though resulting in some less offensive artifacts of it's own. See Abrash's blog (and his previous few posts) for details.

 

*swear removed*

What you should have said was: I say good fellow, I think I may disagree with you on a few points.

 

The more I read about Oculus Rift, the more I want one. I really enjoy the immersive nature of first person viewpoint games and can't wait to be able to use something like this.

Conversely, I hate the over the shoulder view perspective that some games use, I mean why bother? It's so unnatural compared to first person view. You might as well be playing a top down style view point like D3.

 

Me to, i cant stand third person perspective games , and will avoid any game with over the shoulder view. It became popular in games as its easier to control than first person view when your using a game controller with tiny little joysticks on it.

 

Over-the-shoulder is far preferable to FPS for 3D platformers. Landing jumps when you can't see your feet without losing sight of where you're going is an exercise in frustration.

This might change when dedicated VR platformers become more common (Rift Rush is a bit rough around the edges, but fun), but then again you can still use the third-person viewpoint in VR: just treat the camera as a floating head you can move around the character with a controller. Some people have reported that slaving camera orbit to head orientation is surprisingly not that nauseating, but you then run into issues as to what to do when the camera hit's a wall: do you 'clip' your head through solid objects, or do you decouple head movement from camera movement (BIG VR no-no).
Mirror's Edge is not a good VR showcase, as currently you cannot face in one direction and run in another, making jump aiming guided by your face.