John Carmack, the chief technical officer of Oculus VR, received a lifetime award at this year’s VR Awards, and he expressed his dissatisfaction here.

„John has been an inspiration to us all in the virtual reality industry; we are proud to recognize the work he has done and the immense impact he is continuing to make. As the hardware and technology continue to evolve, John will no doubt be leading at the forefront of innovation for virtual reality,” AIXR chief executive Daniel Colaianni said. (AIXR is behind the VR Awards.) The Accenture VR Lifetime Achievement Award was awarded the first time, so it is still in a nascent state. Despite that, Carmack had somewhat of a critical comment after receiving the award:

„I’m often kind of grumpy around the office because I haven’t been satisfied with the pace of progress that we’ve been making. When I’m in VR I see the magic there, but my brain is always throwing up these giant ‘to do’ Post-It Notes on top of everything, reminding me of all the work that’s yet to be done. So it’s going to be a little while before I feel good about reminiscing about my achievements. All that technology doesn’t mean much until it’s brought in service of user value. So more than anything, I hope that I’ve helped bring this new canvas for people to work on and that the work that those people do will be paving the way in the future,” Carmack said. He also mentioned the „paleo-VR” from the 1990s (a prime example of it would be the Nintendo Virtual Boy…), but he expressed that the modern VR era started with Palmer Luckey’s prototype of the Oculus Rift.

The issue is that the breakthrough is VR is somewhat weak. The PlayStation VR is passable at best: sure it sold well, but the Oculus Rift’s technology is superior, but it costs more money. VR is still a niche technology, which should not only improve but also cost less, as you need a strong enough PC as well to play. Not everyone has a beefy computer.

Source: PCGamer

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