[doctorpangloss]

> we all admire Fast Inverse Square algorithm.

i don't. that guy basically made the same game over and over again, while nearly everyone else was innovating in game design, reaching new audiences, etc. that's what change is about!

and then, he blows up the next thing he's put in charge of (VR), and blames everyone but himself. how many billions did he get and he couldn't figure it out? every bit of ethos from that guy was bad, it's not just the one little ethos of the hardcore little optimization algorithm, it's every ethos.

[po1nt]

Quake III was widely successful. John Carmack (probably not author of the algo anyway) later open sourced the game 6 years later which is admirable. Regarding his VR achievements, he made VR viable and not just a military project. I actually like John Carmack and I see him as one of the OG garage programmer.

I personally think he was enormously successful in VR, just not in a market sense but in a technology and UX sense. In my opinion VR is still yet to come to a mass adoption, just not in the "second life" fantasy, but in the "replacement for workspace monitors" kind of way.