from the we-will-not-be-judged-by-what-we-have-destroyed-but-what-we-have-created dept.
John Carmack Steps Out of Meta's VR Mess
John Carmack steps out of Meta's VR mess:
John Carmack is a legendary name in the tech industry, a prodigy programmer who worked on gaming milestones like Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. His late interests, virtual reality and AI, are now forcing his decision to leave Meta and its very messy business outlook.
John Carmack is leaving Meta's VR business. After a decade spent trying to "move things" within Mark Zuckerberg's company, the co-creator of the FPS genre has decided to give up and pursue other interests with his own startup. Carmack's final message, however, depicts a rather troublesome situation for his former employer's business.
Meta, the ginormous corporation previously known as Facebook, is inefficient, constantly self-sabotaging and "ill prepared for the inevitable competition" to come, Carmack said in his final message to employees. The programmer left id Software in 2013 to work full-time at Oculus, a company later acquired by Facebook/Meta to become part of Facebook Reality Labs' VR efforts.
Carmack said that Quest 2, Meta's latest attempt at building and marketing a VR headset for the masses, is pretty close to what he considers the "right thing" to do if you want to make a good product. "It all could have happened a bit faster," Carmack also said, but Meta seems to be inherently inefficient, just like production code which is unable to go beyond a 5% GPU utilization rate.
Meta is not progressing at the pace it should, Carmack remarked, because the company has "only known inefficiency" and "is ill-prepared for the inevitable competition" in the VR space. Meta has a ridiculous amount of people and resources, and yet it is constantly self-sabotaging and squandering effort. It's not even "operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy," Carmack said.
Meta is Facing the Test of its Lifetime
Meta is facing the test of its lifetime:
In an internal memo, a top exec says a "perfect storm of skepticism" won't deter Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse plans.
Bosworth's note made the case for why employees — and the public — should believe in the company's $10 billion-a-year investment in developing new technologies like AR/VR, eye-tracking, and graphics processing.
"This post is my attempt to set the record straight," said Bosworth in an interview with Recode last week, speaking to critics who think Meta is spending too much on new technology that hasn't yet caught on at the same scale as social media. "There's been a really bad misunderstanding of the business and the fact that 80 percent of the investment that we're making is an investment in the core business. And if you ask the average person, isn't it reasonable for a company to invest some percentage, maybe even 20 percent, in its future?"
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks the metaverse will be the next iteration of the internet, a technological shift akin to the mobile phone. But even in the best case scenario for Zuckerberg, it will take time to achieve that vision — by his estimates, as long as 10 years. Meanwhile, some investors have grown wary. One recently called Meta's continued spending on it "terrifying" in a recent open letter urging the company to cut back.
John Carmack Quits Meta, Labels It Inefficient and Fragile
John Carmack quits Meta, labels it inefficient and fragile:
Legendary developer John Carmack has quit his role as a consultant to Meta, where he worked as an executive consultant on its Oculus virtual reality hardware.
[...] He thinks it could have been better if Meta were a more efficient organization.
"We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort," he wrote. "There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy."
He also mused, without attaching the thought specifically to Meta, that "an org that has only known inefficiency is ill-prepared for the inevitable competition and/or belt tightening."
Meta has already reduced its workforce by thirteen percent as the advertising market (and Meta's share price) droops due to unpleasant economic conditions.
Carmack's observation that Meta is inefficient and bloated will therefore not be well-received by investors.
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The next Meta Quest headset, planned for launch this year, will be thinner, twice as powerful, and slightly more expensive than the Quest 2. That's according to a leaked internal hardware roadmap presentation obtained by The Verge that also includes plans for high-end, smartband-controlled, ad-supported AR glasses by 2027.
The "Quest 3" will also include a new "Smart Guardian" system that lets users walk around safely in "mixed reality," according to the presentation. That will come ahead of a more "accessible" headset, codenamed Ventura, which is planned for a release in 2024 at "the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market."
That Ventura description brings to mind John Carmack's October Meta Connect keynote, in which he highlighted his push for a "super cheap, super lightweight headset" targeting "$250 and 250 grams." Carmack complained that Meta is "not building that headset today, but I keep trying." Months later, Carmack announced he was leaving the company, complaining that he was "evidently not persuasive enough" to change the company for the better.
Related:
John Carmack's 'Different Path' to Artificial General Intelligence
John Carmack Steps Out of Meta's VR Mess
The Low-Cost VR Honeymoon Is Over
The First "Meta Store" is Opening in California in May
John Carmack Issues Some Words of Warning for Meta and its Metaverse Plans
Meta Removing Facebook Login Requirement for Quest Headsets by Next Year
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nuke on Tuesday December 20, @01:15PM (3 children)
Wow, Carmack telling us that Meta is inefficient and constantly self-sabotaging must be contravening a non-disclosure agreement. So would revealing that Zuckerberg is a megalomanic obsessed with VR, and such a narcissist that he has effectively made his own unappealing avatar the creepy company mascot, but I guess we will never know that.
No Zuckerberg, I will never be wearing your dorky goggles in place of my PC, when one wrong eye movement would send my life savings into your bank account.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday December 20, @02:56PM (2 children)
I've got no problem with the dorky glasses themselves - if they were offered by anyone other than Facebook I would have long since bought a pair.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 20, @08:05PM (1 child)
I'll hop on the train when we get hybrid flat AR/VR smartglasses, probably weighing closer to 50 grams than 500 grams. Apple has long been rumored to be working on such a product, and then the cheap Chinese clones will come out not long after that.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday December 21, @03:18PM
I hope so - those would be awesome.
From what little I know of possibly applicable technology though, it may be a while before "cheap knockoffs" that are actually worth the price of admission actually become cheap compared to anything but the Apple versions.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday December 20, @01:44PM (1 child)
John Carmack proved himself to be very competent in dealing with devils already, long time ago, so I believe him on this. Though I am rather pleased with Meta self-sabotage, Meta is a natural disaster, not just an evil corporation.
What Meta really performs about VR looks like a typical task of purposely destroying a promising technology by artificially managed obstructions and staged incompetence.
Conservative industry often achieves that by buying startups and hiring genii to do... nothing, so they can't succeed competitively elsewhere. Reminds me of Daniel Robbins, creator of Gentoo, who was hired by Microsoft to do... nothing. Same role.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20, @01:57PM
Don't forget Miguel de Icaza.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday December 20, @03:07PM
Who?
Its a technology in search of a customer base, not a technology trying to fight off competitors.
"I know guys, lets spend billions remaking 'second life' which nobody wanted from the turn of the century, but our remake will be more corporate, less cool, more censored, and no way to block ads, everyone's gonna love it"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 20, @03:10PM (6 children)
Elon Musk should step down at Twitter and
byebuy Meta.How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday December 20, @04:02PM (5 children)
They're both very high on the megalomaniac scale, but Musk is more of a visionary than Zuckerberg (with or without VR goggles).
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 20, @09:28PM (2 children)
I'm trying to figure out why you think anybody who simply takes other people's ideas and claims they are their own is a "visionary".
When you look at Musk's businesses, what they're doing is either (a) stuff other people were already doing (PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Company), (b) stuff other people thought about doing but decided were stupid (hyperloop), or (c) so pie-in-the-sky that nobody including Musk is getting to them any time soon (his entire Mars plan). He didn't invent any of the things that his fanboys credit him with inventing, nor has any of his companies done things that were unprecedented.
When you look at Zuckerberg's business, what they're doing is either (a) stuff other people were already doing (Facebook, VR), (b) stuff other people thought about doing but decided were stupid (VR), or (c) so pie-in-the-sky that nobody including Zuckerberg is getting to them any time soon (VR again). He didn't invent any of the things that his fanboys credit him with inventing, nor has any of his companies done things that were unprecedented.
These guys aren't genius, they're just rich, and the economic system we have protects wealth so much that they basically can't end up not-rich even if they do something mindbogglingly stupid (say, buying a failing company for $44 billion).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by inertnet on Tuesday December 20, @10:29PM
I have to agree with all that you wrote, but I don't see visionary as being equal to genius. Many people work just as hard as those two, but only some stumble upon a goldmine and that's what happened to them. The main difference though, is that Musk is more driven to get things done. I find it interesting that he often approaches problems with a trial and error, evolving solution, which will ultimately result in a functioning product. You can only do that if you have unlimited money. Many of his projects are things that I would never even try to participate in, like his brain implants, or moving to Mars. I don't follow him nor am I a fan, in his business decisions and personal life he seems to have the same trial and error attitude. But he gets things done and that's probably what will get him in the history books, while Zuckerberg will be forgotten.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 21, @01:04AM
And I wonder why you think what Musk and Zuckerberg do is merely take other peoples' ideas? I can steal ideas too! Where's my multi-billion dollar company?
Consider that first line "stuff other people were already doing (PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Company)". No, other people weren't doing PayPal, etc. Because if they were, they'd be the ones with the big companies not Musk. I'll note that Tesla and SpaceX are both groundbreaking. Tesla isn't groundbreaking, but it's the largest new car company in something like 50 years (the last one was created in 1948). SpaceX is completely new. It's hard to explain how we've gone from "Here's some cool stuff we could do if space launch prices ever went down." to "They went down, now what?" There's so much more that we can do in space now. And if he can get anything near the claimed launch prices for Superheavy (I've seen prices that I would normally associate with a space tether system), then it will be revolutionary.
Someone who can make that happen is visionary in my book even if he steals all the ideas.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20, @10:41PM
Zuck is a visionary. He just doesn't tell anyone about the living hell he envisions.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22, @12:03AM
Visionary isn't the work I'd use to describe Musk. Musk is an agent of change - and sometimes that's as important, if not more so, as the vision. Setting things in motion to overcome collective human inertia to execute toward the vision is not an easy thing to do.
Anyone expecting Musk to actually execute all the way through have a poor understanding of the man. He may get his hands dirty and execute in some cases but only as a means to do the above. Him being "polled" off as the CEO of Twitter is all part of his plan.
Zuckerberg is just a tenacious kid that got lucky to be in the right place at the right time - and his only credit was tapping his tenacity to bend it to his advantage.
Of course, it doesn't mean he is not a megalomaniac though - one can be many things.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Tuesday December 20, @06:04PM
OK, so this kind of describes any large company or government organization. If you try to move them in a different direction then they are traveling in, you may as well try to move a glacier. The correct action is to change course not move the glacier ;)
Anyway, stories like this is how new companies can compete with the entrenched entities that dominate a space. It's not even anything special against Facebook/Meta here, just general observation.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21, @07:46AM (4 children)
What he actually did was walk backwards until he was up against a wall and then turned 180 degrees and walked forwards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21, @01:56PM (3 children)
> 180
Wouldn't this work better if he backed up to the exit/door?
Or is Carmack such a god that he walks through walls??(grin)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21, @02:56PM (1 child)
It was a bug in some game. (Maybe The Sims?) The collision detection had a bug where if you backed up to a wall, you would sink in slightly. If you then rotated 180 in place it would "pop" you to the other side of the wall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21, @09:18PM
Cool, thanks! Not much of a game player, never heard of that fun bug.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday December 22, @05:58AM
Of course he can walk through walls: all he has to do is whisper "idspispopd".