[HN Gopher] Carmack Unscripted
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Carmack Unscripted
Author : tosh
Score : 73 points
Date : 2022-10-11 21:30 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.facebook.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.facebook.com)
| stusmall wrote:
| I'm sure some PM somewhere in Meta is proud it's using that
| horrid avatar instead of an actual video. But ooft, it looks so
| goofy on what seems to be a serious conversation.
|
| Their whole metaverse bet seems weirder and weirder by the day.
| Keyframe wrote:
| It does look goofy, doesn't it? Like an elaborate joke. I'm not
| trying to shit on people's hard work, but it all looks so, I
| don't know.. bland and not interesting AT ALL. Like Second life
| meets that playstation thing, but even worse somehow.
| tomrod wrote:
| Sometimes good work needs to be shit on in a constructive
| way.
|
| This is bloody awful quality in visual quality and marketing.
| You want to show something that works well. This... this does
| not "work", let alone well.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I'll happily spend an evening watching vrchat shenanigans or
| 2.5D vtubers but this thing just goes so far beyond
| 'corporate inoffensiveness squeezed the soul out of it'. It's
| like the developers actively disdain their own work.
| SXX wrote:
| Meta just need to partner with Microsoft to integrate it with
| Linkedin.
|
| Then it's will turn into the one true cringe generator.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| "I am so proud and honored and humbled to announce that my
| avatar now has three glowing rings over its head!"
|
| "Please help me celebrate my Metaversary..."
|
| "Nobody truly appreciates how hard us weebles work to get our
| Zuckabadges. Next time you see a weeble, give it a '/clap'!"
|
| Oh sweet lord this will be horrific.
| apineda wrote:
| It's very distracting. Plus I appreciate being able to see
| peoples faces as they express themselves and ideas.
| tekni5 wrote:
| I completely agree, this absolutely horrendous for a visual
| presentation. A wii like character, no proper lighting,
| floating with no legs and the subtle fidget moving of the
| limbs, lack of facial expression and flapping mouth that hardly
| mimics the sound. What did facebook spend all their money on?
|
| I'd rather see video or even a still picture of Carmack than
| this monstrosity.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| A proper Mii would have been better. They are purposely
| cartoonish and can't move in human ways.
|
| This is trying to be vaguely human in hand and lip movement
| and it looks like bad marionette.
|
| Hopefully it gets better but right now I'd rather just listen
| to the audio.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The immediate comparison I think of is VRChat, which does
| literally everything on that list better and has by
| comparison a shoestring budget.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Wouldn't it be great to read an honest postmortem report, a
| few years from now?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's actually unsettling to me how committed they are to such
| garbage.
|
| I'm hoping this is just an expensive example of the Sunk Cost
| Fallacy because otherwise it's perplexing and eerie.
| vkou wrote:
| > It's actually unsettling to me how committed they are to
| such garbage.
|
| Facebook missed the boat on owning an OS or phone, so their
| only hope in protecting access to their apps is by owning a
| brand-new platform.
|
| Which means that the company is all-in on VR, regardless of
| whether or not the result will be any good.
| [deleted]
| scifibestfi wrote:
| It's whiplash how Meta VR is putting out demos that look 20
| years old, while Meta AI is putting out demos that look like
| they're from the future.
|
| https://makeavideo.studio
| coding123 wrote:
| I don't know what metaverse is, but I feel a lot more comfortable
| just playing a game like ESO and hanging out with people dancing
| and sitting in chairs near me. /sitchair
| barelysapient wrote:
| Why even have the video? The lips aren't in sync, the movement
| stutters. Its horrible to watch.
| msa_ds wrote:
| I can't even see how long the video in my firefox, and no
| jumping around. I would personally fire the people responsible
| for this right now, bad idea and bad implementation. But seems
| Zuckerberg is obsessed over this failure...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I think it was because it was a live transmission.
| [deleted]
| karmasimida wrote:
| I mean I really don't want to shit on Meta but ...
|
| is this parody? The quality of this is really really bad, almost
| ps2 level bad
|
| Using this for presentation is really unwise.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Holy cow and he said this was a CUSTOM BUILD to maintain frame
| rate! So it can't even push this level of graphics normally.
| For what it showed I'd expect about 600 FPS. And the arms are
| jittering..Wtf?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| They are working with low bandwidth graphics, I wonder if that is
| part of their global strategy...
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| I hope a video of the event will be uploaded to YouTube, for some
| reason it didn't want to play on my MS Edge Android... Only works
| on Chrome when on Desktop mode, but that's really not usable...
| [deleted]
| lwneal wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouq5yyzSiAw
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Is it just me or is the audio balance set a bit too far to the
| right? It makes it uncomfortable to listen to this with
| headphones.
| wskinner wrote:
| I noticed this as well.
| tomcam wrote:
| Why... why is he bottomless? (He's represented by a Wii-like
| avatar. When camera angles change from close up to medium shot
| he's just a floating torso in a living room set)
| iandanforth wrote:
| One of the big announcements in the Keynote was "legs" so
| apparently all avatars have been legless.
| roughly wrote:
| Because if he had legs, he might also have genitals, and you're
| not allowed to do that on Facebook's Metaverse.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| There were some "harassment" issues with legs.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| My guess is because of height variance, crouching, misaligned
| floors, difficulty doing IK in a lifelike way given all those.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| They could maybe hire some engineers and, I don't know, have
| them work on that? Every other game in the world seems to
| have figured out a solution.
| taejavu wrote:
| Maybe they couldn't figure out how to stop the legs from
| flailing around and obscuring his face.
| abledon wrote:
| I wonder if the majority of people designing/pushing these huge
| systems of weird cartoon avatar interaction systems... are a tad
| bit on the spectrum (Which gives them superpowers in
| understanding tech/algorithms....) but a side effect is the
| uncanny valley of these weird avatars being pushed by these teams
| at Meta/FB. It feels more 'creepy' to me talking to a cartoon
| 'uncanny-valley' representation of a person rather than just
| seeing their actual photo/video feed.
|
| reading this post on "Avatars, Anthropomorphism, and Autism
| Spectrum Disorder"...
|
| > A 2016 study looked measured the neural responses of children
| with ASD and neurotypical children when shown unfamiliar human
| and robot faces. The test showed that the targeted responses were
| present for both for neurotypical children, but only for the
| robot faces for the kids with ASD. "Together, these studies
| provide some evidence that individuals with ASD may typically
| process anthropomorphic rather than human faces
|
| https://codebaby.com/avatars-anthropomorphism-and-autism-spe...
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| It looks like they're trying make corporate Memphis art meets
| DreamWorks movie character design into just the standard
| avatar. Insanely goofy.
| benreesman wrote:
| I'm more than a touch aspy myself which makes this faux-biting
| rebuke that sounds cool in only my head a bit meta: but nerds
| figured out how to sell tech stuff to normies quite some time
| ago.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Zuck hasn't.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I think it's much more a facet of limited performance on these
| platforms rather than anything else. Performance on headsets is
| a challenge on pretty much all of these apps, from VRChat to
| Rec Room. I also think a lot of people that look just at the
| pictures don't realize that presence in VR adds a lot and can
| compensate for some loss of graphical fidelity. It's like how
| the first 3D games were quite blocky and a lot less refined
| than the best 2D games of the era but just the ability to move
| your character and the camera in 3D compensated for the bad
| graphics, to an extent.
| xnx wrote:
| As best I can tell the push for this comes from the top and no
| one who knows better is stopping him.
| sneak wrote:
| Loginwall - anyone have a summary?
| radiojasper wrote:
| Tune in to Carmack Unscripted at Meta Connect to hear John
| Carmack's unscripted take on the future of technology.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I clicked through and it's a livestream of Carmack's VR avatar
| somewhat out-of-sync with his voice.
|
| I think it's live now and hopefully there'll be a transcript
| later.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Also streaming in youtube
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouq5yyzSiAw
| jandrese wrote:
| Seems to be about VR tech so far. It's mostly about social
| media stuff thus far, with complaints about slow login times
| and how the Horizon Worlds doesn't integrate with the rest of
| the system and has interface issues. John wants more screen
| sharing for people in VR chat like environments.
|
| John is obsessive about eliminating lag everywhere. Ironic that
| his facial animations are slightly lagging the audio track.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Also, the facial animations are so limited in expressiveness
| it makes it look like he's suffering from blunted affect.
| nharada wrote:
| Is there any good way for me to try this out without buying a
| $1500 piece of hardware? My instinct is that Oculus' VR vision
| doesn't make any sense, but I want to try it out before being
| confident that my instinct is correct.
| SXX wrote:
| Thanks to FB you can buy $400 "Meta Quest 2" and experience
| like 95% of good VR content. Yeah it somewhat worse than Valve
| Index for VR enthusiasts, but it also much cheaper.
| Ninjinka wrote:
| My company's Slack was dying laughing at how negative his event
| was within the first 10 minutes. And then towards the end he says
| "and now I'm gonna be grumpy" and we were sent reeling.
|
| Favorite quote was "one of my internal posts was reported and
| taken down for not being sensitive enough."
| dzdt wrote:
| I'm convinced that as long as "metaverse" is a thing that
| involves putting on a nerdy pair of goggles to participate the
| whole concept is going precisely nowhere with the general
| population. Its like 3d TV: no one has any interest in putting
| special hardware on their face to participate in things like
| that.
| p1necone wrote:
| The thing that bewilders me is that this has _already_ been
| done with stuff like VRChat, but FB seems to think they can
| come along with a weird sanitized corporate version of the same
| thing that doesn 't do anything at all new and actually attract
| users?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| They're probably right. No one else is providing a headset as
| good as the quest 2 at the same price point, because no one
| else has $10 billion a year to burn,
| tristor wrote:
| Wow... thanks to the person that posted the YouTube link, because
| I have Facebook blocked. Carmack was good to listen to, but the
| pan in when they turned it over to him /felt/ laggy, like you
| could see frame rate jitter, and the entire thing was out of
| sync. I'm generally pretty bullish on VR for entertainment and
| collaboration long-term, but this honestly felt like going back
| 20 years ago. I've had more realistic and smoother experiences in
| MMOs with voice chat.
| runjake wrote:
| This is embarrassing for Carmack and I'm surprised he agreed to
| this.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| He's Audi 5000 to work on AGI, right?
| dbish wrote:
| Not 100% true. He stated on Lex's podcast that he is part
| time (1 day/week AR/VR) with the rest of his time on his new
| AI startup
| ffhhj wrote:
| He just entered the Desert of the Real. Leave all that has a
| meaning behind.
| captainthrow wrote:
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| World is bonkers... can someone elaborate what is happening @ FB
| and other Silicon Valley companies where people seemingly went
| crazy? There are a handful of contenders in the video game
| entertainment industry who are really capable of creating a
| metaverse like thing with stunning detail, but this?
| JieJie wrote:
| The developer of Doom is building the corporate Metaverse.
|
| You guys are pulling my leg, right?
| Karsteski wrote:
| Yes, it's very unfortunate that he is associated with Facebook
| now :| Such great technology, that I'll never use until other
| companies are able to catch up.
|
| The idea of using any sort of VR tech that Facebook controls
| literally disgusts me. Can't even imagine the amount of
| information they will control on people with such things...
| msa_ds wrote:
| Every single one of my childhood heroes has committed suicide
| before my eyes by doing stuff like this. I always considered
| them having some solid morals and being wealthy enough would
| make this improbable but boy I was wrong. Oh well, they can't
| kill the old memories, yet.
| SXX wrote:
| To be honest Carmack have a good reasons to work on it even
| if it means work for TheEvilCorp: first of all if you listen
| to him he is truly interested in advancing VR tech. So he
| doesn't do it just for the money.
|
| Also I guess he run out of money when Armadillo Aerospace has
| failed and at least before he talked like he want to make
| second attempt in space industry and this will require a lot
| of money.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| In the Metaverse, no one can pull your leg because they forgot
| to code it. :D
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| barbazoo wrote:
| I'm wondering how this is any better than video. Sure, if you
| have a hammer, everything looks like a nail but still.
| yrgulation wrote:
| As someone who's looked up to carmack, unless he's forced to do
| this against his will, i find it disappointing he would promote
| this failing meta product.
| rvz wrote:
| So we have the Carmack fans rushing in to hear his masters voice
| as a floating virtual avatar in the metaverse. But I thought they
| weren't interested in the whole thing because of the _' Meta is
| dying'_ narrative? [0]
|
| So far it looks like despite the so-called 'chaos' reported by
| the media about Meta, he is still _bullish_ on both AR and VR at
| the company.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33087535
| dbish wrote:
| Fwiw, Carmack spends the vast majority of his week working on
| AI as he is a VR/AR consultant now, and has stated it's around
| one day a week (he announced a new AI startup recently), so it
| seems he's more bullish on AI.
| parker_mountain wrote:
| AR is where the future is. VR is a major stepping stone. He is
| being paid obscene amounts of money to work on things he finds
| is cool.
|
| So of course he's not going to trash talk it.
|
| > But I thought they weren't interested in the whole thing
| because of the 'Meta is dying' narrative? [0]
|
| I am happy to listen to a smart person who is very clever talk
| about things I'm interested in, even if I disagree with them on
| key points.
| xsmasher wrote:
| HN is not a monolith. Some people might like Meta and other
| people don't like Meta. You can also like Carmack and dislike
| Meta.
|
| I don't see the narrative you're talking about in that link.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| If you like Meta but don't want to admit it, downvote this
| comment!
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Carmack never stops talking for even a moment. Never repeats
| himself and clearly expresses his thoughts in real time. It's
| some sort of autism I presume.
| Version467 wrote:
| I find it very inspiring to be able to express your thoughts in
| such a clear and concise manner. Most people are usually either
| very charismatic/good presenters, or highly technical. But
| Carmack does both while still sounding friendly and just in
| general excited about tech.
| [deleted]
| SXX wrote:
| While this "metaverse" thing is worse than some "crypto NFT AR"
| scams I do appreciate that Facebook invest into VR R&D heavily
| and hopefully at some point in future some other company will
| benefit off their investment. I guess it's great they give
| funding to people like John Carmack instead of spending these
| money on lobbying another anti-consumer garbage.
| hwers wrote:
| I'm seeing a lot of R&D solely focused on giving them the
| chance to extract rent through future silly things like buying
| artificially scarce houses in fbs metaverse. I'm barely seeing
| any "giving back" type research like AT&T created with their
| research in the internet.
| SXX wrote:
| Their end-game is very much obvious, but honestly they are so
| bad at it... I doubt they will manage to actually build
| anything successful to extract any value out of it. The
| reason why Facebook Metaverse is so cringey is because they
| have no clue how to make games or anything like it. The "real
| metaverse" already exist in Roblox, Fortnite and few other
| popular games that every teenager socialize in.
|
| At the same time thanks to Facebook any average Joe can
| easily get consumer-ready VR hardware for around $400. We
| just really dont have many companies behind VR except for
| Valve and they're simply dont have enough manpower to create
| mass-market hardware.
|
| My point is that we must appreciate those engineers who
| persuaded Zuck to spend money on VR hardware and research.
| Yeah their attempt at "metaverse" is laughtable, but
| investment into hardware is priceless.
| camdat wrote:
| > I'm seeing a lot of R&D solely focused on giving them the
| chance to extract rent through future silly things like
| buying artificially scarce houses in fbs metaverse
|
| An example from FB please?
| cm2187 wrote:
| Am I the only one being put off by the talking avatar thing? It's
| in the way. I don't think it works.
| p1necone wrote:
| It looks like a wii avatar from 15 years ago and the motion
| tracking is all jittery, FB is trying to win the VR market with
| this garbage?
| tomcam wrote:
| Highly distracted. First time I've listened to John Carmack
| without being able to concentrate easily.
| savanaly wrote:
| It's sort of pointless if you have to just watch it in a video
| like I assume we all are. I think it would be better if you
| were in there in the room with John (using a VR headset).
| Personally I'm listening to it in the background from another
| tab.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Yea, I actually found the avatar in the video was _worse_
| than just audio. It was just enough motion to distract my
| eye, while being pretty valueless in terms of communicating
| anything.
|
| I ended up listening in the background, but opened up a new
| blank tab to hide the motion.
| [deleted]
| goertzen wrote:
| Seems like they could of made this a lot better with a basic
| lighting setup ... but nothing was as a bad as the comments
| suggest.
| sebringj wrote:
| The bit about the logs was funny. I have noticed my oculus 2 be
| pretty responsive and zippy to now being frustrating to the point
| I put it down. I would guess its getting bloated.
| sebringj wrote:
| Oh yah and he said there is a part of me that wants to "burn it
| down". omg I was laughing so hard.
| cheschire wrote:
| Probably a condensed version of his 5 hour Lex Fridman interview.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I845O57ZSy4
| dagmx wrote:
| Not at all. Carmack does these each year at Connect, and
| they're always fairly bespoke to the things that Meta are
| working on and just announced
| waffle_ss wrote:
| He seems to do an annual "update" video from wherever he's
| at, about minutiae of whatever he's working on at the time.
| It used to be QuakeCon keynotes[1] when he was at id.
|
| [1]: https://archive.org/details/john-carmack-quakecon-
| keynotes
| savanaly wrote:
| That interview is great but I don't think there's any overlap.
| This is focused on VR, something that was only touched on in
| the Lex interview.
| swellguy wrote:
| Has John Carmack ever been scripted? Kind of a weird catchphrase.
| "Gun that shoots bullets."
| actionfromafar wrote:
| True. Why point that out? I get paranoid. :) Was he scripted
| this time? The avatar video was to hide reading from the
| prompt?
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(page generated 2022-10-11 23:00 UTC)