In fact, if according to the article in Jester's mind, John. Judging from Carmack's biography, it is difficult to accurately locate Carmack as a profession.

How to put it, although he is the father of FPS games, the father of 3D engines, and the world's greatest programmer, you can't just call him a game maker, which is too much to look down on him, and too much on his mind.

In fact, to borrow a phrase from DOOM: Revelations, Carmack is loyal to something called 'technology', and he's interested in anything that has an 'engine'.

When he was a semi-freelancer tinkering with games in his garage, Carmack had already gone under the knife on his 'jaguar', completing his first voyage with a modified jaguar, when he was not yet twenty years old.

The success of DOOM led Carmack to buy his first Ferrari. He then drove the Ferrari into the workshop of the car tuning team for the simple reason that it wasn't fast enough. He was very dissatisfied with the engine.

Carmack is an extremely simple and straightforward person who follows his wishes and strives to make them happen. As long as it is something that he thinks is not suitable, it must be removed. This is the case with the kittens he has raised for many years but has spread wild on his turf, and his partner John Brown, who has worked together for many years but has disagreements on technology and design. Romero so. The same is true for the "right business" of gaming that has been in business for many years. But it also guarantees that he has developed the best game engine possible.

In fact, Jester is also a little worried right now.

Although he is now very happy to work with Carmack, no one can figure out what this genius really thinks.

Maybe he's having a good time working with you right now, but maybe one day he'll knock on your door and tell you he's leaving, not because he's dissatisfied with his work, but because he's lost his passion and interest in his work.

It may sound incredible, but for some geniuses. This is what they really think, and the genius here is not the genius who casually says that he can do a few math questions with a hundred points in the exam, but a person who can turn the entire industry upside down with the power of one person. Carmack is undoubtedly that kind of person.

Historically, Carmack lost interest in game development, or to be precise, in some engines.

It was only because the engines to be developed became more and more complex with the progress of the times, and such work was beyond the situation where a single person could completely change it, that he lost interest in this kind of work that required collective efforts and became more and more convergent. He is a genius, how can a genius do such a job?

So, he started to do not do his job.

And now with the development of 3D engines, this phenomenon is becoming more and more immediate.

"I'm afraid, in a few years, Carmack will continue to do his destiny to do nothing."

Jester thought.

So what did Carmack, who didn't make games, do in the original history?

It may be a bit unacceptable to say that, he went to make a rocket.

As a teenager, Carmack was fond of rockets, bombs, and the like. He started with his own handicraft workshop, and later established 'Armadillo Aerospace' and officially devoted himself to the aerospace industry.

Despite the fact that armadillo astronautics is of a private research nature. Carmack is also a half-way monk, but his attitude is by no means petty. Carmack has repeatedly made breakthroughs in the embedded programming of rockets; On the company's website, videos of its successful launch of small rockets are posted from time to time; They even set up a 'Carmack Prize' fund to reward those who can build rockets that can be launched into space 100,000 feet away and recover GPS.

However. Over the course of a few years, Carmack has invested more than $8 million in his aviation dreams, all of which he earned from game development. In addition to winning the NASA Lunar Challenge Award twice, winning a total of $850,000, Armadillo Aviation not only failed to realize Carmack's dream of becoming an astronaut. did not receive a penny of sponsorship, making his aerospace career difficult.

The rocket development was unsuccessful, and Carmack did not 'get lost'. He discovered a new 'toy' - a head-mounted display. It's an extension of his original desire to "make virtual reality" a reality when he first played games and developed them. To this end, he even used idSoftware's resources to develop it. Later, when he discovered the OculusVR prototype on the geek website, he not only went into battle to modify the firmware program himself, but even brought it to the E3 to recommend it, and later left idSoftware to devote himself to becoming the CTO of Oclus.

Carmack's actions have led to strong dissatisfaction with the parent company, ZeniMax, and the two sides will go to court. Although the outcome of the lawsuit is still unknown, the good news is that OculusVR has been improving. Carmack announced at GDC that the general-purpose version of GEARVR will be available by the end of the year, and players can finally expect the "God of Engines" to bring us another "virtual reality" surprise.

Jester's eyes lit up a little as he thought of this.

In Jester's eyes, investing in the development of what rockets is purely a practice of burning too much money in a panic, there is no meaning at all, it is not that this matter is meaningless, but that there is no point in doing this kind of thing individually, doing this kind of project requires the state to take the lead and invest tens of billions of funds for ten or twenty years, and the cooperative development of a research and development team of thousands of people is not something that can be solved by individuals.

But that's not the case with VR, or the development of virtual devices.

Although it was a bit too early to say this in the mid-90s, it was after all a clear direction for the future of games, and in the future, hardware came to the door, and they were all rushing to enter the industry.

Since Carmack was just interested in this, why not ask him to work with him on the development of VR equipment when he lost interest in the development of game engines?

This kind of development work will not allow Carmack to spend ten years on the development of rockets in vain, so that it will be forgotten by some new players.

You can also accumulate some valuable experience for the development of virtual reality equipment that you will inevitably carry out in the future.

Although this thing and rocket development will not have any heavy results for more than ten years, this is a completely different thing for a game company, and for Carmack, it is also a completely different life. (To be continued......)