The Oculus Rift is looking to have finally cracked the problems that beset early attempts at virtual reality headsets. It’s fitted with a hi-res viewing panel split to accommodate for each eye, internal sensors that track head motion accurately and quickly, and it’s in a sub $1000 price range. But the biggest issue the developers have had to overcome is latency.
As John Carmack puts it, “The latency between the physical movement of a user’s head and updated photons from a head mounted display reaching their eyes is one of the most critical factors in providing a high quality experience."
You can find out why and how they’ve tried to overcome this problem below.
The tools that id used to build Rage are to be released on Steam today. “Finally," says id head John Carmark. But the release comes with some big caveats. The toolset is absolutely enormous, and don’t expect to be cranking out new levels any time soon.
We have a soft spot for Doom 3. It was essentially a ghost train set in a haunted research base on the moons of Mars: with demons, hellspawn and floating heads leaping out at you from the shadows. All built in John Carmack’s id Tech 4 - a rival to the Unreal Engine that just didn’t catch on.
Doom 3 was was decently received: but you needed a hefty PC to run it, and certain design decisions were widely ridiculed - we’re talking about forcing players to choose between their gun and their flashlight. Doom 3: BFG edition is Doom 3 done right: a re-release with new levels that fixes the mistakes of the original. Even better: even an average PC of today shouldn’t be troubled by John Carmack’s programming wizardry.
So what’s changed? What’s stayed the same? And why should you play it?
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The Steam community’s diligent dataminers have uncovered mention of Doom 4 in the Steam CDR - the record which describes every game and subscription available on Steam, in the present and, often, future.
In 1981 Castle Wolfenstein was the game to be seen with. Developed by Muse Software, led by the man-mountain Silas Warner, the World War II title was the first ever stealth-based game. Players would sneak through the castle, disguise themselves as guards, and used some of the earliest digital voice samples. It was a spectacularly popular and innovative game.
What, you thought Carmack, Romero and id software made Wolfenstein? Think again.
Following the interest in the Oculus Rift virtual reality technology currently in development at Id Software, using the Doom 3: BFG Edition as a tech demo, John Carmack has revealed plans to fully integrate the $300 VR headset into Doom 4.
For Gabe Newell, Windows 8 is a “catastrophe", for Blizzard it’s “not awesome"; for John Carmack, it’s simply a little boring. So said id’s finest programmer during his keynote speech at QuakeCon yesterday, telling the assembled throng: “There’s nothing I’m looking forward to".
Alright, that’s enough real life news for one day - time for a dose of unfeasible sci-fi to remind us we’re all living in the future. At one point during the Kickstarter pitch for virtual reality headset Oculus Rift, a man uses the word “augmentation" in the Deus Ex sense. He’s deadly serious - and so are John Carmack, Gabe Newell, Cliff Bleszinski, and CEO of Unity David Helgason.
The tools that id used to build Rage are to be released on Steam today. “Finally," says id head John Carmark. But the release comes with some big caveats. The toolset is absolutely enormous, and don’t expect to be cranking out new levels any time soon.
We have a soft spot for Doom 3. It was essentially a ghost train set in a haunted research base on the moons of Mars: with demons, hellspawn and floating heads leaping out at you from the shadows. All built in John Carmack’s id Tech 4 - a rival to the Unreal Engine that just didn’t catch on. 
The Steam community’s 
Following the interest in the Oculus Rift virtual reality technology currently in development at Id Software, using the Doom 3: BFG Edition as a tech demo, John Carmack has revealed plans to fully integrate the $300 VR headset into Doom 4.
