I have some questions for the new year and only you can answer them!

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth reflects on John Carmack leaving, Meta Quest Pro feedback, headset weight, infinite display in more in his latest Q&A session.

Video Game giant, Former Oculus CTO and Meta’s most important VR consultant John Carmack has decided to leave Meta. Meta bought oculus back in 2014 for over a reported 2 billion dollars. Here is Johns full statement.

I resigned from my position as an executive consultant for VR with Meta.  My internal post to the company got leaked to the press, but that just results in them picking a few choice bits out of it.  Here is the full post, just as the internal employees saw it:

This is the end of my decade in VR.

I have mixed feelings.

Quest 2 is almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning – mobile hardware, inside out tracking, optional PC streaming, 4k (ish) screen, cost effective. 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. It all could have happened a bit faster and been going better if different decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to The Right Thing.

The issue is our efficiency.

Some will ask why I care how the progress is happening, as long as it is happening?

If I am trying to sway others, I would say that an org that has only known inefficiency is ill prepared for the inevitable competition and/or belt tightening, but really, it is the more personal pain of seeing a 5% GPU utilization number in production. I am offended by it.

[edit: I was being overly poetic here, as several people have missed the intention. As a systems optimization person, I care deeply about efficiency. When you work hard at optimization for most of your life, seeing something that is grossly inefficient hurts your soul. I was likening observing our organization's performance to seeing a tragically low number on a profiling tool.]

We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say “Half? Ha! I’m at quarter efficiency!”

It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover.

This was admittedly self-inflicted – I could have moved to Menlo Park after the Oculus acquisition and tried to wage battles with generations of leadership, but I was busy programming, and I assumed I would hate it, be bad at it, and probably lose anyway.

Enough complaining. I wearied of the fight and have my own startup to run, but the fight is still winnable! VR can bring value to most of the people in the world, and no company is better positioned to do it than Meta. Maybe it actually is possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement.

Make better decisions and fill your products with “Give a Damn”!

I think after watching Johns now final special q&a at connect this past fall we pretty much could have seen this coming. What are your thoughts? Is meta digging themselves a whole or do they have it under control? I know I’ll miss his open and honest reviews of meta and their progress in the VR industry. Thanks for watching and I’ll catch you in the next quickie.

Quest Pro Controllers Now work with the Quest 2

The self tracking three camera no ring a ling quest pro controllers are now able to work with the quest 2 headset for us pleebs. This ability comes with the new quest 2 firmware update version 47.  But if you want to upgrade it is going to cost you a pretty penny at 300 dollars… Yeah… Thats a hundred dollars less than what the headset is going for right now after the price increase and the same price of the quest 2 when it originally launched. 

Now of course there are some significant upgrades with the quest pro controllers for example there are 3 separate haptic motors, located in the trigger, thumb and body of the controller compared to the OG quest 2 stock controllers which only has one haptic motor. 

The trigger alone gets its own update with a sensor to track finger curling and sliding. There’s also a pressure sensor on the left side of the controller to relay information that creates what meta calls precision grip to know how hard you are holding your controllers. Oh and don't forget the stylus tips that are connected to a pressure sensor at the bottom of the controller to convert your drawings on actual surfaces in the real world into the virtual world.

The $300 pro controller bundle comes with the 2 pro controllers and straps, a charging dock, a power adapter, a charging cable if you don’t want to use the dock, and those forementioned stylus tips. Previously it was announced that the controllers would launch december 6th but as of posting this video they are not available on meta’s site. You can however buy each controller individually for $150 on their own with out any charging accessories, so I guess that means the bundle is a deal?

Are you going to make the switch? Personally I’m holding out for the Quest 3 which hopefully will launch next year with some of these improvements to the controllers at a lower price. I just can’t see the benefit for me personally right now in dropping the cash for these controllers or the meta quest pro itself. Let me know your thoughts in the comments and I’ll catch you in the next quickie.

Here's the first 5 minutes of what the bat vr which just released on Steam and for Oculus Meta Quest 2

This Oculus VR Headset Kills You

The VR OG and founder of Oculus turned weapon and defense contractor Palmer Luckey has created a murderous hardware mod for the meta quest pro. Luckey was Inspired by the fictional Nerve Gear headset found in the Japanese Novel slash Anime Sword Art Online in which characters are playing a real life online role playing game where if they die in the virtual game they die in real life. Lucky shared his prototype creation on his blog stating “The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me – you instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it.  Pumped up graphics might make a game look more real, but only the threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game. Tusche Palmer Tusche

So how exactly does this Quest pro mod kill you? Well Palmer attached 3 explosive charge modules which are connected to a photo sensor that detects when a specific game over type screen flashes red at a certain frequency and then they explode. With those simple parameters developers can integrate the death mod quite easily and so as palmer put it, When an appropriate game-over screen is displayed, the charges fire, instantly destroying the brain of the user.

Palmer did say he has plans to more properly lockdown the system with an anti tamper mechanism which will make it impossible to remove or destroy the modded headset. 

Palmer ended his blog by saying there are a huge variety of failures that could occur with the mod and kill the user at the wrong time.  This is why I have not worked up the balls to actually use it myself, and also why I am convinced that, like in sword art online, the final triggering should really be tied to a high-intelligence agent that can readily determine if conditions for termination are actually correct. So Zuckerberg? Maybe John Carmack…

At this point states, it is just a piece of office art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design.  It is also, as far as I know, the first non-fiction example of a VR device that can actually kill the user.  And It won’t be the last.

See you in the metaverse.

Are you ready to put your life on the line in the metaverse? Let me know down below and also this is a total joke… I’m pretty sure…. yeah?