Carmack will lead the game revolution, again.

Yesterday I saw a rather dull twitter message from John Carmack, linking to one of his interviews. But I clicked on it none the less, just out of curiosity. But what I discovered was absolutely fantastic! It totally made my day, my week, heck, my whole month.

In the interview he revealed that he’s currently working on a virtual reality headset. I experienced some VR headset demo’s in the past, and I must say I was never impressed, and it seems neither was John. If you want to know why John Carmack is the ideal person to work on a VR headset, let me take you on a trip to the past, my past.

The year was 1992, and 13-year-olds with a PC, like me back then, played 2D DOS games. One day I was at a friends house, and he booted a game called Wolfenstein 3D, which I just “HAD TO SEE!”. But man, when I saw the game, my first reaction was “whow, it’s like really walking inside a game, this is REAL!”

I’m pretty sure that nobody that looks at the game today is going to be impressed like I was back then, but making the switch from 2D to 3D was HUGE.

I never had that same feeling ever again with any game, despite the huge improvements later on. And yes, games today look more real than ever. But the thing is, with any new game released, no matter how impressive it might be, nobody is jumping out of their seat saying “WHOW, this is real!”.

If John is able to pull this VR headset thing off, many gamers (hopefully including myself) will experience what I felt when first looking at Wolfenstein 3D. It will allow you to really walk inside the game. I’m sure John Carmack is the ideal person to get a VR headset working like you expect it to work, or even better.

Now if only John Romero would jump into the picture and restore the original dream team, that would totally make my whole year!