[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/zenimax-accuses-john-carmack-of-thef...
> California employers can sidestep non-competes in the following instances:
> EXCEPTION 1: If the employee sells business goodwill
> EXCEPTION 2: If the owner sells his or her business interests
> EXCEPTION 3: If the owner sells all operating and goodwill assets
> Upon the business’ dissolution, a member of the company may agree to a non-compete if operating a similar business in the geographic area. Goodwill is the company’s name and brand reputation. Employees with stock options are not considered company owners for purposes of non-competition agreements.
Combine that with being burned out and I can see trying something else.
If I had another 30 IQ points I'd be climbing over walls and sneaking into buildings at night to work on this stuff.
I encourage anyone to try out some AI related stuff, genius IQ not required. It's still a young field so there aren't yet huge towers of knowledge to climb before you can do anything. The core ideas are actually super simple, requiring nothing more than high school math.
Maybe it's just a sign of how hot AI is right now.
VR headsets have improved immensely since I first tried it in 1991 (Dactyl Nightmare) and I suspect they will keep improving. Where we are at today is not necessarily a plateau but it might feel like one if you were expecting a growth curve that looks like a hockey stick.
VR in its current form is eye cocaine, nothing more. Why watch poppy avatars hop around in a virtual reality, while you are bound to do nothing?
In every way, VR should be restricted to very few use cases, not to - hello Zuck - rebuild reality completely and hereby track everything you do or see to deliver even more addictive material to your eye vision.
It sounds cool, some use cases look cool, but the very fact that hardly anyone at Meta uses their own device/creature, speaks volumes. I am glad, JC takes consequences and abandons this experiment.
In fact I think the other use cases are bogus, everything else is unimpressive to me except the ability to have a decent fitness experience with FitXR or Beatsaber.
That's not Carmack's opinion. To quote from his post:
"Despite all the complaints I have about our software, millions of people are still getting value out of it. We have a good product. It is successful, and successful products make the world a better place."
"the fight is still winnable! VR can bring value to most of the people in the world"
The main problem with VR in my opinion is a lack of software. Most of the games produced have been either toys that are little more than a tech demo, or ports of other games not designed around VR. There haven't been many serious attempts to harness VR for non-game playing purposes.
I think the future is still bright for VR. We're currently in a bit of a local hype-cycle trough, but the tech is only going to improve.
The simple answer here is that people's brain hardware is already quite good at turning flat 2D representations into 3D mental experiences, so stereoscopy doesn't add much. Making it, as you say, a gimmick. The historically cyclical interest in the gimmick suggests that it's mainly appealing as a novelty.
Also suspicious to me is the way that Meta still isn't releasing actual use statistics. They're happy to release DAU numbers for Facebook. Where are the equivalent numbers for Oculus? What Carmack says is consistent with my suspicion that a lot of people bought the Quest to try it but don't use it regularly. Which would explain why they keep those numbers very quiet.
That's another sign to me that VR is once again not going anywhere. Or rather, half of it isn't. Oculus-style VR is two best in one: 3D persistent virtual worlds and stereoscopic facehugger interfaces. The former has had great success, mostly in games, but the latter has spent decades as the thing that people are supposed to want but don't actually use much when they get the chance.