John Carmack Joins Oculus Rift, Assumes Role of CTO

The legendary John Carmack of id Software has joined the Oculus Rift team as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), the company has announced. Carmack, which won’t be leaving his position at id Software, is looking forward to help develop Oculus Rift and its virtual reality technology for the general consumer. Carmack, in one way or another, has been part of the Oculus Rift project since the beginning and is a true believer in the future of virtual reality in the world of gaming.

In fact, Carmack was the first developer to actually integrate a prototype Oculus Rift into a game, when the device was a mere hand-held prototype without a software development kit (SDK). He will be working from the new Oculus Rift office in Dallas that is opening soon and had this to say about joining the team:

“I have fond memories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming – the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods, and so on. Duct taping a strap and hot gluing sensors onto Palmer’s early prototype Rift and writing the code to drive it ranks right up there. Now is a special time. I believe that VR will have a huge impact in the coming years, but everyone working today is a pioneer. The paradigms that everyone will take for granted in the future are being figured out today; probably by people reading this message. It’s certainly not there yet. There is a lot more work to do, and there are problems we don’t even know about that will need to be solved, but I am eager to work on them. It’s going to be awesome!”

Source: Kickstarter