John Carmack pushing for Oculus Rift on mobile

In an interview with Oculus VR chief executive Brendan Iribe, it’s been revealed that id’s John Carmack, who recently became Oculus VR’s Chief Technology Officer, is focusing on getting the Oculus Rift on mobile devices.    

“He’s been spearheading a lot of the mobile effort, working with a group of talented engineers on that. He largely works out of the Dallas office. Most of the engineers, though, are in Irvine here, working remotely with John. There’s a handful of other developers in Dallas that John is working with.”

He mentioned that the Oculus VR team was trying to respect Carmack’s working style, which involves problem solving and intense concentration. Iribe stated that they have their strategy focused on developing for mobile and PC, but Carmack is heading the development of mobile.

“We have a few partners we’ve been working closely with. We have our strategy focused on the PC and mobile. In our vision, that’s where VR needs to be. It’s going to be an exciting time. All we hope is that, much like Valve-What we all hope is that the VR of the future is really good. What we don’t want to see is bad experiences. We want comfortable breakthrough experiences.”

I don’t think Oculus on mobile will be the best idea. All I imagine is people using them on the bus, or walking home and just falling down a manhole or in the path of a moving hover car. Nonetheless I’m really excited for the consumer release of the Rift for any platform they want to release it on. It’s been available to developers since March this year. With Carmack on the team, I imagine whatever they come up with may very well change how we play games forever.

Last Updated: December 17, 2013