Former Oculus CTO thinks Horizon OS going public will stagnate innovation at Meta
Meta recently made headlines when it announced it was making its Quest OS open to third parties. But John Carmack — former CTO at Oculus — thinks this will lead to stagnation at Meta.
Shortly after Meta’s announcement Carmack took to X and tweeted about why he thought this was a good and bad idea. He praised the potential for “boutique” headsets, something Meta is aiming for with the publicization of Quest OS.
But he also said this would mean that the people at Meta will now be focusing more on hardware development instead of software. An approach that he thinks doesn’t address the meat of the problem when it comes to improving VR.
Shortly after Meta’s announcement Carmack took to X and tweeted about why he thought this was a good and bad idea. He praised the potential for “boutique” headsets, something Meta is aiming for with the publicization of Quest OS.
VR is held back more by software than hardware. This initiative will be a drag on software development at Meta. Unquestionably. Preparing the entire system for sharing, then maintaining good communication and trying not to break your partners will steal the focus of key developers that would be better spent improving the system.
— John Carmack (former CTO at Oculus), X, April 2024
Oculus was the startup that made the first modern PC VR headset: the Oculus Rift DK1. The startup was soon acquired by Meta. In 2022 Carmack left Oculus to focus on his AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) startup by the name of Keen Technologies.
The news of Quest OS being rebranded to Horizon OS and going open-source also came with other exciting announcements. Asus is working on a performance-oriented gaming headset using Horizon OS. Lenovo is working on a productivity-focused headset. And Meta and Xbox are collaborating on a limited edition Meta Quest.
These are the “boutique” headsets Carmack referred to in his tweet. And there’s probably many more to come.
The news of Quest OS being rebranded to Horizon OS and going open-source also came with other exciting announcements. Asus is working on a performance-oriented gaming headset using Horizon OS. Lenovo is working on a productivity-focused headset. And Meta and Xbox are collaborating on a limited edition Meta Quest.
These are the “boutique” headsets Carmack referred to in his tweet. And there’s probably many more to come.
For the time being the Quest 3 is the best all-round VR headset.
What I find fascinating is that the founder of Oculus, Palmer Luckey, was glad about the move by Meta. Luckey hopes it isn’t too late for Horizon to go open-source. I covered Luckey’s thoughts on this in my post about Meta’s CTO explaining the company’s decision.
So on one hand you’ve got the founder of Oculus praising the move, and on the other you’ve got the former CTO thinking it’s not such a bright idea. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how Horizon OS going public will pan out.
One thing’s for certain, though. Our list of the best VR headsets is going to need some major overhauls soon.
So on one hand you’ve got the founder of Oculus praising the move, and on the other you’ve got the former CTO thinking it’s not such a bright idea. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how Horizon OS going public will pan out.
One thing’s for certain, though. Our list of the best VR headsets is going to need some major overhauls soon.
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