The name John Carmack may be unfamiliar to non-gamers, in fact you only need to know his name.
As one of the founders of the famous game design company id Software, the game industry often compares him to the “father of the 3D game engine”, and some people call him “the father of FPS games” or “legendary programmers” to reflect His contribution to the development of game technology.
In 2013, he was recruited by Oculus VR and is now the company’s chief technology officer.
Although he is already in the VR/AR field, recently Carmack has poured cold water on the industry in a technology podcast show, He believes that consumer-oriented AR devices are not coming soon .
“We are all waiting for an era – you will wear something like sunglasses, it will automatically collect information about the surrounding environment, and then present a three-dimensional virtual image in front of your eyes. However, we are There are still some unresolved fundamental problems in the display technology field, and the size of the AR glasses cannot be made small enough for you to wear it all day long.”
In May of this year, Oculus launched a wireless VR device called Oculus Quest, which does not It needs to be connected to other devices to run independently, greatly simplifying the burden on players to use VR.
But in Cargack’s view, even if Oculus Quest is built into an AR device, this boxy shape is still difficult for the masses to accept, not to mention wearing it out of the house.
“We can reduce its size by half or even a quarter, making it look like goggles. Will people wear it for a long time? I don’t think so, not to mention Oculus right now. I haven’t created such a product yet.”
In fact, considering that Carmack is in a company that is selling VR equipment, his perception of the future of AR equipment is somewhat biased, although there are many links between the underlying technologies in these two areas. .
Under ideally, Carmack hopes that AR devices can be part of the human body, just like the status of a smartphone today: “When I get out of bed, I can’t help wearing it, just as simple as wearing a pair of glasses. And then let it give me more than 16 hours of experience, how can it be only 2 hours of battery life?”
At the same time, he also said that most AR devices (including mobile phones) in the market have very limited vision, and it is difficult to bring a completely immersive experience, which limits their play in various fields such as games. It is difficult to bring a killer usage scenario.
▲ The AR scene shown by Magic Leap was amazing.
When talking about the development of AR technology, Carmack also mentioned his friend Magic Leap. He said that Magic Leap was criticized after the launch because the AR demo videos they used for promotion were synthetic and exaggerated rather than truly achievable.
“You want to show your vision in some way, but it doesn’t correctly explain what the product can do. Instead, it gives people a lot of content beyond the ability, which will only bring about a gap. Sense.”
And for HoloLens, Carmack recognizes some of the breakthroughs Microsoft has made in the corporate and professional arena, but the high pricing means that the impact of this device is still difficult to expand into the consumer market.
” Essentially, it’s like a wrench tool. When you need to do a specific job, it can provide something of value. That’s what the AR device is in the world today.” p>
Source: HoloLens