{"id":95239,"date":"2022-10-12T22:24:59","date_gmt":"2022-10-12T22:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/carmack-theres-a-bunch-that-im-grumpy-about-in-virtual-reality\/"},"modified":"2022-10-12T22:24:59","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T22:24:59","slug":"carmack-theres-a-bunch-that-im-grumpy-about-in-virtual-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/carmack-theres-a-bunch-that-im-grumpy-about-in-virtual-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Carmack: \u201cThere&#8217;s a bunch that I&#8217;m grumpy about\u201d in virtual reality"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<figure class=\"intro-image intro-left\">\n  <figcaption class=\"caption\">\n<div class=\"caption-text\">enlarge <span class=\"sep\">\/<\/span> &#8220;This here, this isn&#8217;t really what I meant,&#8221; Carmack said of last year&#8217;s promise to attend this year&#8217;s Meta Connect conference in the metaverse.<\/div>\n<p>Meta<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<aside id=\"social-left\" class=\"social-left\" aria-label=\"Read the comments or share this article\">\n<\/aside>\n<p><!-- cache hit 1145:single\/related:9dd6df6f9df8a4378af751b1f6d04e84 --><!-- empty --><\/p>\n<p>Last year, former Oculus CTO (and current company advisor) John Carmack threw down the gauntlet for Meta&#8217;s near-term metaverse plans.  By the 2022 Meta Connect conference, Carmack said last October, he hoped he&#8217;d be in his headset, &#8220;walking around the [virtual] halls or walking around the stage as my avatar in front of thousands of people getting the feed across multiple platforms.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Carmack&#8217;s vision didn&#8217;t come to pass Tuesday, as a jerky and awkward Carmack avatar gave one of his signature, hour-long unscripted talks amid a deserted VR space, broadcast out as plain old 2D video on Facebook.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Last year I said that I&#8217;d be disappointed if we weren&#8217;t having Connect in Horizon this year,&#8221; Carmack said by way of introduction.  &#8220;This here, this isn&#8217;t really what I meant. Me being an avatar on-screen on a video for you is basically the same thing as [just] being on a video.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That set the tone for a presentation in which Carmack said that &#8220;there&#8217;s a bunch that I&#8217;m grumpy about&#8221; regarding the current state of Meta&#8217;s current VR hardware and software.  While that grumpiness was somewhat tempered with talk of recent improvements and hope for the future of virtual reality, Carmack seemed generally frustrated with the direction Meta as a whole is taking its VR efforts.<\/p>\n<h2>Pushing for quantity over quality<\/h2>\n<p>Take Horizon Worlds, for instance, Meta&#8217;s premiere product for socializing in the company&#8217;s version of the metaverse.  On the one hand, Carmack said watching Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s Connect presentation in a Horizon room alongside a few dozen other people Tuesday offered &#8220;some genuine benefits&#8221; over watching that same presentation on a laptop screen amid his cluttered desk.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, that&#8217;s a far cry from his vision for &#8220;arena scale support with thousands of avatars milling around&#8230; at least hundreds in large rooms&#8230; in a completely uniformly shared world.&#8221;  Carmack said he wants &#8220;to be present with a live audience in a virtual space where everyone who he wanted to could stay afterwards and talk as long as they felt like it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad_wrapper\" aria-label=\"In Content advertisement\">\n    <span class=\"ad_notice\">Advertisement <\/span>    <\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<blockquote class=\"ars-pullquote large \">\n<p>&#8220;Last year I said that I&#8217;d be disappointed if we weren&#8217;t having Connect in Horizon this year&#8230; This here, this isn&#8217;t really what I meant.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span>Former Oculus CTO John Carmack<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>If you could achieve a truly virtual conference space like that, &#8220;You could just give people a free headset and still come out ahead&#8221; compared to the hassle of putting on an in-person conference, Carmack said.  That kind of broadly shared world is a difficult technical challenge, Carmack said, and while Horizon &#8220;definitely can&#8217;t handle it now&#8230; it&#8217;s not an insurmountable [challenge]&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Carmack also mentioned some &#8220;public mockery about avatar quality earlier this year,&#8221; a seeming reference to a low-detail Mark Zuckerberg avatar that went viral in August after Meta shared it online.  That reaction has caused &#8220;a lot of people internally [to be] paranoid about showing anything but the highest quality avatars.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"image shortcode-img center large\" style=\"width:100%\"><img loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"The public mockery of this Mark Zuckerberg avatar means that &quot;now a lot of people internally are paranoid about showing anything but the highest quality avatars,' Carmack said.\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/zuckavatar-640x427.png?resize=640%2C427&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/zuckavatar.png 2x\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\"\/><figcaption class=\"caption\">\n<div class=\"caption-text\">enlarge <span class=\"sep\">\/<\/span> The public mockery of this Mark Zuckerberg avatar means that &#8220;now a lot of people internally are paranoid about showing anything but the highest quality avatars,&#8217; Carmack said.<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>But Carmack expressed some heavy skepticism at that push for avatar fidelity.  He expressed a preference for spaces filled with a lot of low-detail avatars to Meta&#8217;s push for the kind of <a>nearly photorealistic &#8220;codec avatars&#8221; that eat up too much processor power to allow for crowded virtual rooms.  &#8220;We&#8217;ve got a finite amount of resources on our headsets here, and cloud rendering won&#8217;t save us in many cases,&#8221; Carmack said.  &#8220;I definitely lean towards optimizing for quantity and not quality.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And while Carmack said he was happy with the current state of Meta&#8217;s avatars, he noted that his Connect presentation was taking place in a &#8220;custom build of Horizon&#8221; designed to guarantee the level of detail on his avatar never dropped.  He also turned off the much-ballyhooed face tracking features on his Quest Pro headset because, in the software&#8217;s current state, &#8220;there&#8217;s at least a decent chance that I would do something very embarrassing looking&#8221; in a very public setting.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>enlarge \/ &#8220;This here, this isn&#8217;t really what I meant,&#8221; Carmack said of last year&#8217;s promise to attend this year&#8217;s Meta Connect conference in the metaverse. Meta Last year, former Oculus CTO (and current company advisor) John Carmack threw down the gauntlet for Meta&#8217;s near-term metaverse plans. By the 2022 Meta Connect conference, Carmack said &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/carmack-theres-a-bunch-that-im-grumpy-about-in-virtual-reality\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Carmack: \u201cThere&#8217;s a bunch that I&#8217;m grumpy about\u201d in virtual reality<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":95824,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/john-carmack-on-meta-vr-theres-a-bunch-that-im-grumpy-about\/","url_meta":{"origin":95239,"position":0},"title":"John Carmack on Meta VR: &#8216;There&#8217;s a Bunch That I&#8217;m Grumpy About&#8217;","date":"October 13, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Meta advisor (and former Oculus chief technology officer) John Carmack has expressed his frustration over the state of the company's virtual reality capabilities.As reported by Ars Technica, Carmack said during the Meta Connect 2022 showcase that \"there's a bunch that I'm grumpy about\".He was delivering his usual presentation but as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":95880,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wall-street-questions-metas-desperate-metaverse-push\/","url_meta":{"origin":95239,"position":1},"title":"Wall Street Questions Meta&#8217;s &#8216;Desperate&#8217; Metaverse Push","date":"October 13, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Mark Zuckerberg made another pitch for his metaverse this week, failing to placate investors. 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Most of its specs are superior to Quest 2, but whereas Quest 2 has a battery life of 2-3 hours,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":96515,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/the-metaverse-has-had-a-very-bad-week\/","url_meta":{"origin":95239,"position":3},"title":"The Metaverse Has Had a Very Bad Week","date":"October 14, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"It's been nearly a year since Facebook rebranded itself to Metaand founder Mark Zuckerberg and the company are facing serious doubts from the public, media, and some of their own employees about the future of their focus on the Metaverse. just yesterday, Meta officially revealed its new Meta Quest Pro\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2017,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/a-doom-mobile-game-from-2005-is-now-playable-on-windows\/","url_meta":{"origin":95239,"position":4},"title":"A &#8216;Doom&#8217; mobile game from 2005 is now playable on Windows","date":"July 2, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"A dedicated group of fans has excavated a Doom mobile game from the sands of time and made it playable again. You won't find 2005's Doom RPG on the App Store or Play Store: it actually predates iOS and Android by a couple of years. And while Fountainhead Entertainment looked\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":94394,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/meta-continues-to-shovel-money-into-the-growing-vr-gaming-segment\/","url_meta":{"origin":95239,"position":5},"title":"Meta continues to shovel money into the growing VR gaming segment","date":"October 12, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"enlarge \/ Previously a PlayStation VR exclusive, Iron Man VR will be coming to Quest 2 after Meta's purchase of developer Camouflaj.Sony Meta's Connect keynote presentation Tuesday afternoon spent a lot of time talking about how virtual reality\u2014and the coming high-end Quest Pro headset\u2014would help revolutionize the future of work\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"<em>The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners<\/em> has brought in an impressive $50 million on Quest VR, proving at least some titles can find a significant market on the platform.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/saints-640x413.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/carmackavatar-760x380.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}