John Carmack leaves Meta after a decade fighting to make VR a reality - Ars Technica

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Carmack's VR avatar waving goodbye to Meta.

After nearly 10 years, John Carmack's clip helping to usher VR hardware efforts astatine Meta (and astatine Facebook/Oculus earlier that) person travel to a close. The id Software co-founder and Doom co-creator officially near the institution Friday night, according to an interior institution memo obtained by Insider and confirmed by the New York Times.

Carmack's departure message serves arsenic a scathing indictment of a crippling inefficiency astatine Meta that helium said helium was  "offended by" and which helium compared to a GPU that tin lone muster a measly 5% utilization. "We person a ridiculous magnitude of radical and resources, but we perpetually self-sabotage and squander effort. There is nary mode to sweetener overgarment this," helium wrote. "I deliberation retired enactment is operating astatine fractional the effectiveness that would marque maine happy."

More personally, Carmack complained that it has been a "struggle" for him to power Meta's wide direction, and that he's "wearied of the fight." Despite his high-ranking "consulting CTO"/"executive advisor" title, Carmack complained that helium is "evidently not persuasive enough" to alteration Meta's VR efforts for the better.

If that benignant of speech dependable familiar, it mightiness beryllium due to the fact that Carmack voiced akin complaints successful his October Meta Connect keynote. There helium talked astir his interior efforts to propulsion for the improvement of a "super cheap, ace lightweight" Meta VR headset that could travel successful astatine "$250 and 250 grams." Instead, Meta has enactment its caller VR hardware efforts down the heavy overdesigned, $1,500 Quest Pro. "We're not gathering that [cheap, light] headset today, but I support trying," Carmack said with immoderate exasperation during the keynote.

In his departure message, Carmack had immoderate benignant words for the strong-selling Meta Quest 2 headset, which helium called a good, palmy merchandise that has "[made] the satellite a amended place." In his October keynote, though, Carmack besides bluntly told Meta that "the basal usability of Quest truly does request to get better," and that "our app startup times are slow, our transitions are glitchy... We request to marque it a full batch better... much, overmuch faster to get into."

Enlarge / Oculus CTO John Carmack couldn't locomotion down the hallway of the 2016 Oculus Connect league without being mobbed by onlookers. He was blessed to clasp tribunal for agelong impromptu Q&A sessions.

Back successful precocious 2021, Carmack besides had some words of warning arsenic Facebook changed its named to Meta and pivoted afloat down the amorphous thought of the metaverse. Carmack said we should beryllium wary of "architecture astronauts" who bash a batch of high-level hand-waving alternatively of gathering viable products that existent satellite customers find useful.

To that end, Carmack laid down a nationalist gauntlet for his chap Meta employees that "we should beryllium doing [Facebook Connect] successful the metaverse" for the 2022 show. When Carmack showed up successful an bare country arsenic an awkward-looking avatar for the 2022 keynote, though, helium said up beforehand that "this here, this isn't truly what I meant."

In an August podcast interview, Carmack said that the astir $1 cardinal Meta is losing each period connected its VR efforts makes him "sick to [his] stomach... But that's however they show committedness to this ... Google goes and cancels each these projects, portion Meta is truly sticking with the backing of VR and AR adjacent further retired with it."