Oculus Snags Legendary Programmer John Carmack to Become its CTO

There are few CTO names out there that would grab people’s attention like a certain John Carmack, but the team at Oculus can begin boasting that today. John has long been supportive of the Oculus Rift, heaping praise on it whenever the opportunity arises. In that regard, it’s almost of little surprise that he winds up in a role where he can help lead the product to major success.

The official announcement post states: “John is one of the brightest minds of our generation — pioneer, visionary, and industry legend. There are very few people in the world that can contribute to the Oculus Rift and the future of virtual reality like John can.“

It’s hard to disagree with that synopsis. John himself has said:

I have fond memories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming – the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods, and so on. Duct taping a strap and hot gluing sensors onto Palmer’s early prototype Rift and writing the code to drive it ranks right up there. Now is a special time. I believe that VR will have a huge impact in the coming years, but everyone working today is a pioneer. The paradigms that everyone will take for granted in the future are being figured out today; probably by people reading this message. It’s certainly not there yet. There is a lot more work to do, and there are problems we don’t even know about that will need to be solved, but I am eager to work on them. It’s going to be awesome!

The Oculus Rift already has a lot of hype around it, but Carmack’s move takes things to the next level. This is going to be a very interesting project to watch.