John Carmack: ‘I have a deep respect for Facebook’

The world of development is still trying to make sense of last night’s shock announcement that Facebook has acquired Oculus VR – but industry veteran John Carmack remains optimistic. 

Facebook has purchased the pioneering virtual reality firm for $2bn, claiming the Oculus technology will enable it to create "the platform of tomorrow".

Reactions have been mixed from developers, with the most notable negative response being Minecraft creator Markus Persson, who has canned a VR version of his indie phenomenon because Facebook "creeps him out".

But Carmack, CTO of Oculus VR and co-founder of id Software, has since confirmed that he is standing by the firm and it’s visions for virtual reality gaming, with a quick update via Twitter:

For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week.I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR.

— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) March 26, 2014

I have a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale.

— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) March 26, 2014

Carmack left id Software back in November, joining Oculus VR at the start of this year to take up the position of CTO and continue making games.