FURTHER UPDATE: By way of clarification, Carmack tweeted that "My time division is now Oculus over Id over Armadillo [Aerospace]. Busy busy busy!"

UPDATE: An id spokesman has confirmed to Polygon that Carmack will "remain at id," but it's unclear how his role at the company will change, if at all, given his new position at Oculus. A Bethesda spokesperson told Penny Arcade Report that "the technical leadership [Carmack] provides for games in development at id Software is unaffected."

Meanwhile, a spokesperson at Oculus has said that he has no idea how Carmack's position at id will be affected by today's news, but "I just know John is now full-time at Oculus." That would seem to preclude having a traditional, full-time role at id as well.

ORIGINAL STORY

Id Software cofounder and legendary game designer John Carmack will become chief technology officer at headset manufacturer Oculus VR, the company announced today.

In announcing the move, Carmack discussed how he believes virtual reality (VR)—as embodied by the Oculus Rift—represents the same kind of frontier that first-person games, LAN play, and mods represented in the past.

“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," wrote Carmack. "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!”

Carmack was one of the first high-profile supporters of the Oculus Rift when it was just a concept, getting behind the unit in a big way as far back as last year's E3, where he called the unit the best VR headset he'd ever used. A VR-compatible version of Doom 3 was one of the first titles demonstrated on the device; the game was originally planned to be bundled with the Kickstarter development kits that went out in recent months, but unexpected delays in the conversion scuttled those plans.

In an interview with Ars Technica last September, Oculus CEO Brenden Iribe said Carmack's support was crucial to getting the effort off the ground.

"If somebody called and said, 'You need to meet with this young guy. He's making a VR headset,' you might say 'Ehh,'" Iribe said. But when it's someone like Carmack making that recommendation, that was different. "I figured, 'Oh, what's Carmack up to now? Is this going to be really practical or not?' But then I thought, 'Carmack is practical, though. He did 2D practically and figured out how to make Commander Keen work, and he figured out how to do 3D and Doom and Quake, so if he is this excited about VR, he must have figured out how to make it feel really good. Then you click it on and you're like, 'Oh shit, this is amazing.'"

In a recent interview with Ars Technica, Carmack hinted that he was getting a bit tired of the game design world, and that he was more interested in the technical side of things these days. "[My design skills] probably tapped out a decade ago," he said. "I don't have anything to say about design beyond the Quake III level.” But even in his new and unfamiliar roles, he's excited to see what tomorrow's designers can do. Some may see the dark side to new innovations like Google Glass or other augmented reality devices, but Carmack believes in the value of these new platforms.

Today's news closely follows id's annual QuakeCon gathering, in which Carmack gave a highly technical, nearly three-hour keynote speech about topics ranging from ambient occlusion to frame rates on head-mounted displays. In that speech, he briefly mentioned that the long-in-development Doom 4 is still being worked on, despite recent reports of behind-the-scenes troubles with the project and a lack of any concrete updates on the game from the company.

At E3 this year, Oculus showed off an unexpected HD prototype of the Oculus Rift with a 1920×1080 screen that solves many of the problems of graininess and visible pixels on the current development kits.

Carmack will work from a new Oculus office based out of his home town of Dallas.