id Software co-founder and Doom creator John Carmack was so impressed with Oculus Rift that he became the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) at Oculus VR. That doesn’t mean he has left id Software. Carmack is still at id and doesn’t plan on leaving. As lead programmer at id Software and rocket engineer at Armadillo Aerospace, Carmack wanted to spend more time working on the Oculus Rift so he picked up a new job and title. As an early supporter of the technology, id gave Doom 3 BFG Edition Oculus Rift support and plans to do the same for Doom 4. With id located is Richardson Texas, Oculus VR plans to open an office in Dallas so the company can be closer to Carmack.

“I have fond memories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming — the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods, and so on,” Carmack said in a statement posted on the blog. “Duct taping a strap and hot gluing sensors onto Palmer’s early prototype Rift and writing the code to drive it ranks right up there. Now is a special time. I believe that VR will have a huge impact in the coming years, but everyone working today is a pioneer. The paradigms that everyone will take for granted in the future are being figured out today; probably by people reading this message. It’s certainly not there yet. There is a lot more work to do, and there are problems we don’t even know about that will need to be solved, but I am eager to work on them. It’s going to be awesome!”

The Oculus Rift headset was originally funded through Kickstarter in Sept. 2012 and managed to raise 2.4 million over the $250.000 it planned on. Development kits started shipping in March 2013 and games like Hawken, Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 now have Oculus support. Oculus Rift development kits sell for $300 which is a little out of my price range. Not that it matters, the only games I would play are Half Life 2, and Quake 4 but there’s no support for Quake 4 at the moment.