Case 6:21-cv-00755-ADA Document 70-13 Filed 06/10/22 Page 1 of 11
`Case 6:21-cv-00755-ADA Document 70-13 Filed 06/10/22 Page 1 of 11
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`EXHIBIT YY
`EXHIBIT YY
`
`

`

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`Case 6:21-cv-00755-ADA Document 70-13 Filed 06/10/22 Page 2 of 11
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`CHAPTER 2
`
`CARMACK THE
`MAGNIFICENT
`
`April 2012
`
`IT WAS JUST SUPPOSED TO BE A MARKETING GIMMICK.
`Six monthsearlier, in October 2011, id Software—the Dallas-based
`game developer best known for pioneering the first-person shooter
`genre—released a new gamecalled Rage.
`“A visual marvel,” declared IGN,in their review of the game.' “A
`breakout achievement,” hailed VentureBeat.2 And, quite succinctly,
`“Carmack!” cheered the New York Times, referring to id’s legendary
`technical director, John Carmack.
`Instead of taking a victory lap, Carmack—a thin, blond-haired
`forty-one-year-old coder whose work (and speech) often made him
`seem part machine—proceeded with his typical postlaunchritual. “A
`little R&D period,”helikedto callit. A little break from game develop-
`ment to think more broadly aboutthe future.
`Typically, these little R8cD periods didn’t lead to larger endeavors,
`but occasionally, there would be a venture to pursue. Such was the
`Case in 2000, when after finishing Quake ITI: Arena, Carmack decided
`he wanted to learn about rocketry and soon after founded a company
`called Armadillo Aerospace (whose goal was to build a suborbital space-
`craft capable of space tourism). Regardless of outcome, these were periods
`
`

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`22
`
`THE HISTORY OF THE FUTURE
`
`OFRage
`
`Carmackgreatly enjoyed and forthis one, following the releas
`2APMAC
`.
`he decided to focus onvirtualreality.
`|
`|
`When asked whyvirtual reality, Carmack would say,
`NG Particula,
`> have beenaspecific incj
`
`reason.” And while there may not
`;
`:
`ic
`ting inciden,)
`an almost equally accurate answer could have
`been
`“it was onlya tar
`ter of time.” Because in many ways, virtual reality was the UNSPokey
`end point ofwhere his engineering efforts had always been heading
`AS A BOY—YEARS BEFORE HE’D PLAY HIS FIRST COMPUTER GAME—joy N CAR.
`mack got his gaming fix with tabletop role-playing games like Dun.
`geons & Dragons.’ Though what he enjoyed even more than pl
`aying
`these games was overseeing them in the role of Dungeon Master.
`That
`enabled him—either from the rulebook or his imagination—to g
`Peak
`adventures into existence; and then when he grew bored with the loose
`restrictions of those rulebooks, Carmack moved to charting his own
`invented journeys on sheets of graph paper. Between that passion fo,
`world-building, and a penchantfor fantasy or science fiction Novels,
`it was clear from early on that Carmack preferred to spend his time
`inventing complex worlds or inhabiting those which had been invented
`by others, So naturally, he was drawn to the godly powerand as
`wish obedience ofprogramming on computers,
`OFall the things to program,
`Carmack’s favorite soon became
`graphics. He loved how something
`as simple as binary code—just a
`mishmash of 1’s and 0’s—led to th
`€ creation of colors, images, and
`the keyboard can be lonely. Like
`Palmer Luckey, Carmack found sola
`ce and purpose-driven friendship
`online,
`hanging out on dial-up-accessible
`
`-you-
`
`underworld of computer game
`high school, Carmackset out to
`‘That game (Shadowforge) an
`were both distributed by a small
`ther game sold
`
`; and eventually, while he wasstill in
`make a gameof his own.
`d his next (Wraith: The Devil’s Demise)
`publisher, Nite Owl Productions. Nei-
`
`€
`

`

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`Case 6:21-cv-00755-ADA Document 70-13 Filed 06/10/22 Page 4 of 11
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`som
`
`CARMACK THE MAGNIFICENT
`23
`e: his work for Nite Owl got him hired to write a tennis game for
`£ larger, Louisiana-based publisher called Softdisk. There, Car-
`a sine a handfulofkindredspirits, three ofwhom he would end up
`vestige his own gamestudio with in 1991:id Software.
`" At the time of id’s founding, almostall the best-loved and best-
`colling games were being made exclusively for consoles. There was a
`seat reason for this: with underpowered graphics, computer games
`inst couldn’t match the speed andsplendor of those made for con-
`oles. Take, for example, a side-scrolling console gamelike Super
`Mario Bros. When players decide to run Mario (or Luigi) across the
`screen, the “camera”is able to keep up, keeping our hero in the frame
`and doing so in a smooth and seamless manner. With computer
`oames, however, this was notthe case. If a character moved beyond
`ie frame, this would lead him to an entirely new screen, That’s just
`how it was, an understandable by-product of underpowered graph-
`ics, and this remained the norm until John Carmack came up with a
`technique called “adaptivetile refresh” that made it possible for per-
`sonal computers—PCs—toperform smooth and seamless Mario-like
`scrolling. In fact, to provejust how Mario-like their games could be,
`the founders of id Software made a democalled Dangerous Dave in
`Copyright Infringement, which nearperfectly re-created the first level
`of Super Mario Bros. 3 (save for swapping out Mario with a spritely
`dude named Dave).
`This breakthrough technique, adaptive tile refresh, became the
`centerpiece ofid’s first game: Commander Keen. Thoughthat gamesold
`pretty well, it still only sold pretty well “for a computer game.” That
`was the qualifier that was always used back then; because compared to
`hit console games(like Super Mario Bros, which sold tensof millions of
`copies), or even just mildly successful console games(like Hogan'sAlley,
`whichsold over a million copies), the best-selling computer games(even
`those part of popular franchises like Ultima or Zork) rarely managed
`'0 crack a hundred thousand copies. So that qualifier existed—“for a
`Computer
`game’—butit wouldn’t last for much longer. Because after
`Comman
`der Keen, id was able to change the perception of PC gaming
`With
`a decade full of megahits: like Wolfenstein 3-D (which sold over
`‘Wo hundred thousand copies), Quake (which sold over one million
`
`

`

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`24
`
`THE HISTORY OF THE FUTURE
`
`cr
`
`.
`
`ware’)
`Windows software’).
`
`ies), and most notably Doom (which, at one point in th
`copies » ANC
`Qs,
`heir Hash
`Gameslike Wolfenstein 3-D, Quake, and Doom made Carmac,
`yck star, and techniqueslike adaptivetile refresh, surface caching -
`.
`5
`*
`.
`F
`Carmack’s reverse made him a legend within the gaming commun;
`But there was also something else about him—something i
`en
`Feologica
`in nature—that elevated Carmack from mere living legend to Sin,
`dalfian hero: a belief that openness, open sourcing, and tech
`nological
`transparency werecritical to innovation. In a now-
`famous blog Post
`entitled “Parasites,” Carmack likened software patents to “Mugging
`someone,” explaining that “in the majority ofcases in softwar
`effect independentinvention.”
`These were not just empty words. Carmack lived by this Credo,
`‘That's why he always publicly shared the source code for his games (af
`ter they had been released); that’s why he regularly provided elabo
`advice to hardware vendors (like Sony,
`Microsoft, and Nvidia); and
`that’s why hereadily divulged experime
`ntal findings and in-progress
`theories when delivering keynote speeches (particularly at QuakeCon,
`an annualcelebration ofid Software’s games),
`In fact, Carmack believed so greatly
`in the importanceofthis type
`ofbehavior—sharing,
`advising,
`divulging—that when he sold his com-
`pany to ZeniMax Mediain 20
`09 (and then signed a five-year-contract
`to work for his acquirer), he
`had special Provisions written into that
`
`» Patents
`
`fate
`
`thinking about seque
`‘als
`
`ls
`
`d in
`ys
`howey,
`Mack wasn’t in
`tereste
`er, Car
`.
`:
`°F Spin-offs just yet. First, he wanted to &
`
`

`

`Case 6:21-cv-00755-ADA Document 70-13 Filed 06/10/22 Page 6 of 11
`CARMACK THE MAGNIFICENT
`25
`joy the exploration of another one of his R&D periods. But what to
`explore? Well, around this time, many of the major electronics manu-
`facturers were hyping 3-D TVs as the next frontier of television. Per-
`sonally, Carmack was nottoo bullish on the odds of 3-D TVs going
`mainstream,butit wassignificant to him that both Sony and Microsoft
`had just released extensions that would allow their consoles to drive
`3-D TVs. And somewhere along the way, while thinking more about
`stereoscopy—the process of presenting two images (onefor the right
`eye, one for the left) in such a way to give the impression of three-
`dimensional depth—Carmack found himself wondering aboutvirtual
`reality.
`Carmack hadn't really thought much about virtual reality since
`the 90s, back when “VR” was one of the tech world’s hottest buzz-
`words and a few VR companieslicensed some of id’s games. Noth-
`ing had come from that brief foray—either because the VR versions
`of those games sucked, or because the companies involved wound up
`going belly-up—butit had now been a couple decades since then, and
`Carmack was curious to see how muchvirtual reality had progressed.
`Surely, he thought, great strides had been made overthe past twenty
`years! Computers, after all, were now hundreds of thousands times
`faster than they were back then. Not to mention all the progress that
`had been made with displays, sensors, and other relevant things. But
`after assessing the HMDscurrently on the market, Carmack wasn’t
`just disappointed by what was out there, he was flat out offended. In
`fact, with some ofthe headsets, the latency—meaningthe lag between
`when someonetries to complete an action on-screen (like, say, firing
`a weapon) and when thataction actually occurs—was actually a step
`back from the systems Ivan Sutherland built back in the 60s! Granted,
`those Sutherland systems were ultra-expensive with low-latency CRT
`displays .. . but still! How could this be? Had VR really flamed out so
`aly in the "90s that touching the technology wasstill perceived as
`Asof late 2011, the most popular HMD wasprobably eMagin’s
`2800 3-D visor, which cost about $900. Lightweight, and with a reso-
`lution of800 x 600, the Z800 was certainly better than anything from
`
`toxic?
`
`

`

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`
`26 THE HISTORY OF THE FUTURE
`
`the 90s. But the headset was flimsy, the trackingwas lousy, and
`ofall, there was this:
`The field of view was terrible. With
`a FOV of only 40 degrees,it felt like
`looking at the world through a toilet
`papertube.
`
`» Wor
`
`|
`|
`|
`|
`
`How could a VR experience possibly feel immersive whenyoufe
`like you've got blinders just outside your eyes? The whole allure ofVR
`was to actually feel present in a different place; and that Just wasn’t Dos.
`sible ifyou had the same FOV as a horse in the Kentucky Derby, ‘Thi
`problem was not unique to eMagin’s Z800 3-D visor;in fact that 40°
`FOV wasjust about the widest ofwhat was outthere.
`Nevertheless, Carmack purchased several of these offensive head.
`sets and spent some time trying to make them better. So Carmack used
`a “testbed” that he had already coded for unrelated graphics works—
`which, essentially, was just an playable scene from Rage—to experi-
`ment with the parameters of the VR headsets he had acquired. And
`eventually, he was able to make enough progress with his experiments
`that hefelt what he would excitedly describe to colleagues as a “kernel
`ofawesomeness.”It was hard to put into words exactly whatthat kernel
`was, but it had something to do with finally, after all these years, feeling
`like he had stepped inside one ofhis creatio
`ns. But again, with nothing
`more than a through-toiler
`Paper-tubes view, this sensation that he felt
`wasbarely a kernel,
`So that was a big problem. And so, too, was this; Carmack had a
`ted only a few weeks toward researching VR and,as the calendar
`Hipped to November, his time was almostup. Asid’s technical direct
`ae
`he needed to focus on tangible revenue streams; thatis, to continue ‘3
`’
`1
`i
`‘Na minor capacity, he’d need to come up W
`
`loca
`
`1
`
`cameabout.
`The following fall,
`red
`‘
`i
`id Software was planningtorelease a remast¢
`version of Doom 3
`which had originally come out in 2004. This ©
`Mastered version
`—which would be called Doom 3: BFG Edition (BF
`
`

`

`Case 6:21-cv-00755-ADA Document 70-13 Filed 06/10/22 Page 8 of 11
`CARMACK THE MAGNIFICENT
`27
`short for “Big Fucking Gun”)—would,like most rereleases, struggle to
`earn buzz againsta slate ofshiny of new games. Unless .
`.
`. well, okay:
`What if, Carmack wondered, we paired Doom 3: BFG Edition ith
`this weird novelty technologythat people haven’t really talked about in
`twenty years? Whatif, at the year’s biggest trade show (E3), we demoed
`a virtual reality version of Doom 3 for the press? It was, indeed, a gim-
`micky idea, but it seemed like an idea thar might garner attention for
`an eight-year-old game,
`This strategy gave Carmack a reason to keep VR onhis radar. Now
`he just neededto find a headset that could deliver an optimal experi-
`ence. Fortuitously, in November 2011, Sony released a “personal HD
`& 3-D viewer” that Carmack thought mightfit the bill: the HMZ-T1.
`With cutting-edge OLED display panels, Sony billed the HMZ-T1
`as a “wearable HDTV”thatgave users “the equivalent of having your
`very own 150" movie screen just 12 feet away, in either 2D or 3D.””
`And while that may have beencool, it wasn’t particularly useful for
`what Carmack had in mind. For one thing, the latency was unbearably
`high; and for another: it didn’t come equipped with a tracking device—
`meaning a sensor capable of detecting the location of the user’s head
`(so that—like in real-life—the screen you are watching does not move
`when you turn your head).
`Nevertheless, a high-def, high-latency 3-D viewerstill might have
`worked well enough for Carmack’s pet project (it was a marketing gim-
`mick, after all); but even fora relatively affordable HMD ($799), there
`wasstill a major, experience-killing problem:
`
`With a 45° FOV, Sony’s HMZ-I1 was
`only slightly less terrible. The OLED
`screen made things more compelling,
`but it still seemed impossible to feel
`“present.”
`
`The FOV issue wasn’t really something that Carmack could address.
`But he could do other things to his game itself{—to the source code of
`Doom 3 BFG—to improve the VR experience of these HMDs.IFthis
`sounds counterintuitive at all—using software to improvea hardware
`
`

`

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`2g THE HISTORY OF THE FUTURE
`
`—_
`
`to fi
`
`experience—an easy way tO think about this is with a televigs
`a television program. Without the hardware (the television)
`lon and
`experience the software (the television program). Though
`uch
`hardware experience is based on the quality ofthe hardware tsete
`the television's display, resolution, features,etc.), there are ways
`(ie,
`or edit the television program so that it optimizes certain aspects On.
`screen (i.e., clarity, contrast, consistency, etc.). And so with t
`he exc
`tion of adding a tracking device to the few headsets that heth eeOu
`might be decentenough to demoat E3(this included theheadset,mn
`Sony and eMagin), Carmack found time over the next few monthstg
`try and makethe software side of Doom 3; BFG Edition as “VR.
`Teady”
`as could be.
`His office, which now resembled a madscientist’s laboratory
`partially dissected headsets everywhere—wasproofofthis ambition,Ay
`E3 approached,he continued to tinker toward somethingbetter, One
`possibility he found online involved using off-the-shelf optics—tike
`series of wide-angle lenses made by LEEP systems in the 90s—that,
`when coupled with an LCD screen, could potentially achieve a wider
`field of view. Exploring this possibility led Carmack to an enthusiast
`website called VR-tifacts, specifically an article entitled “LEEP onthe
`Cheap.”* In the commentssection of that article, Carmack read about a
`hardware hacker who appeared to be doing some very interesting work
`in this apace. A hacker who wentby the name “PalmerTech.”
`
`
`
`——ae
`
`FROM: John Carmack
`TO: Palmertech
`
`| would be interested in checking out, or buying outright, one of your
`high FOV prototypes if that is possible. | am going to be doing some
`private VR demosat £3, and it would be interesting to compare the
`relative merits of high FOV versushigh resolutions versus high refresh
`
`rates
`
`Reading Carmack’s message from inside his messy trailer, Palmer
`Luckey could hardly believe his eyes. John Carmack, the man who
`had madeseveral of his favorite games, wanted to borrow something
`
`

`

`Case 6:21-cv-00755-ADA Document 70-13 Filed 06/10/22 Page 10 of 11
`CARMACK THE MAGNIFICENT
`
`29
`
`chat he had made? Despite a mild temptation to freak out, Luckey re-
`minded himself that whenit came to virtual reality headsets, he knew
`way more than probably anyone in the world—including even Car-
`mack the Magnificent. So, trying not to sound like a drooling fanboy,
`Luckey replied, “I would be glad to lend orsell you one, whichever you
`prefer. | have been planningonselling it as a kit starting in June, butI
`can put one together for you before then .
`.
`. Are you interested in the
`120-degree prototype or the 270-degree prototype?”
`Now,as surrealasall this felt, it wasn’t as if Luckey thought that
`this would lead to somesortoflife-changing “big break.” Sure, it felt
`incredible to be able to help out oneof his heroes, but, really, what was
`the best-case scenario here? Probably that(if impressed) Carmack would
`post a nice review on the forum, which could potentially help Luckey
`sell a dozen more kits for his headset. And that was an outcome that
`would have thrilled him, a possibility that motivated him tofinalize his
`plans for the Kickstarter and announce it on MTBS3D.But before do-
`ing so, he wanted to make sure that he couldrely on the help of a few
`friends, most ofall from Chris Dycus, a skinny, subdued-but-enthusiastic
`teenager who had been part ofModRetrosince the early days and, by this
`point, was one of Luckey’s best and mosttrusted friends.
`“Dycus, | need your help,” Luckey explained over the phone. “I
`want to make a Kickstarter for the VR headset thing. Would youstill
`be down to help put someofthe kits together?”
`“Sure,” Dycusreplied. Partly because he wanted to be goodfriend,
`partly because he just loved building things and mostly because—quite
`frankly—he assumed Luckey wouldn’t end up following through. In
`all the years they had been friends, Dycus could count on one hand
`the numberoftimes Luckey actually finished one of his hardware proj-
`ects. Typically what happenedis that Luckey would get excited abouta
`Project; come up with a bunchofbrilliant, creative solutions; and then
`before finishing up that project he’d get excited by somethingelse.
`This time, however, Luckey was determined to make it happen.
`This was virtual reality, after all—the most passionate ofall his pas-
`‘ion projects—and with his teenage years nearing their end, there was
`"© more room for excuses. So on April 15, 2012, Luckey wrote up a
`lengthy post on MTBS3D:?
`
`

`

`rojec
`
`Case SeTHEEUTORE 70-13 Filed 06/10/22 Page 11 of 11
`y OF TH
`30 THE HISTOR
`Case 6:21-cv-00755-ADA Document 70-13 Filed 06/10/22 Page 11 of 11
`sp.
`Sepaths “hatO making great progress on my
`“Hey guys,” he
`bes ff (Optics, display panels, and interfac.
`hard.
`kit! All ofthe hardest st [am working on howit actually fits to
`Bethe,
`right oa arts make a head mount... The
`ware) is done,
`goal is to
`and figuring out the
`es t on June Ist that will end on July
`Ist,
`shi
`» SNip.
`.
`:
`tart a Kickstarter P
`?
`ke a pe
`st frerwards as soon as possible. [ won't makeapennyofprog, i
`
`this project, the goal is to pay for the costs . ee manufacturin |
`ping afte
`ieee
`d credit card/Kickstarter fees with
`about $10left ove, for
`cpsede pizza and beer. I need help, though .
`.
`.” After listing 4
`“tsofthe ia he needed help with (a logo, ideas for the Kickstarter
`video,etc.), Luckey published the post on MT'BS3D.Hefelt hopeful—
`hopeful that this might be “the kind of thing that jumpstarts a bigger
`VR community.” Butalso: he suddenly felt very aware ofthefacttha
`he was only nineteen years old. No, that doesn’t matter, Luckey tc.
`minded himself. Not online. On here—with an internet connection
`and keyboard at my fingertips—I'm it-doesn’t-matter years old.Allthat
`really matters is that I'm going to do my part to try and resurrectvir-
`tualreality,
`
`