John Carmack Tech Talk with UMKC-SCE

To kick off our Spring 2017 Commencement, we asked honorary doctorate recipient, John Carmack, to speak to students and community members on campus here at UMKC.

[@ASMRChess]

“Opportunity is the delta between what people have and what is possible.” - John Carmack

[@presidentstevenking]

That's cool

[@discutiibiblice]

sir, this is the most nonsensical thing I ever heard this year.

[@ericcartman2119]

what is delta?

[@aoeu256]

Delta is just another name for difference, also you can say "patch". Opportunity is the patch between now state and possible.

[@thomaswilkinson6101]

40:00

[@jonwallace6204]

So the best industry professionals got the pipeline to 100ms, so I rewrote everything and reduced by it an order of magnitude. Yeah, that sounds like a John Carmack thing.

[@EvoPortal]

Thats not the point, the industry didn't need anything less than 100ms. If it did they would have done it loooooong before Carmack

[@mcflick]

@@EvoPortal "The industry / authority is all-knowing" is something only autistic people believe. Every organization is a bureaucracy, its agility inversely linked to its size.

[@ChronoTango]

@@EvoPortal bruh, the industry was doing it before John Carmack and then John explained to them exactly what is being lost by deciding it isn’t important.

[@Samopal.VanoZz]

Changing pixel color on your screen require more time than sending packet to europe and back. Silly times.

[@platomanchi]

I love how he say "The problem..." and immediately correct himself to "The challenge...." at 12:19

[@aikonatsumi5611]

One (of the many) signs of an intelligent person. I knew someone that would always brag about enjoying when things go wrong because it's a chance to learn something new. In high stress situations he excels and is a very successful man.

[@ashrasmun1]

It's just because the sentence he wanted to create makes no sense with "problem" as a subject.

[@ElShogoso]

So. First he revolutionized the PC game industry (and the whole game industry while he was at that) by being part of the development of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Quake, etc. Then he went do do rocket science. Now he is pretty much a central figure in VR research. What a legend.

[@Blake4014]

because he's extremely good at problem solving.

[@MN-sc9qs]

" being part of the development"??? He was the technical genius and lead programmer for all of it.

[@garrettk7166]

Doom :-)

[@denisblack9897]

he sided with machines dude helps the elite to merge humanity with computers, a new species - Cyborg

[@metroplexprime9901]

Well I mean, that's not hard when you're inter-dimensional nexus of knowledge and energy John Carmack.

[@generaldrones]

He is so articulate. I can't even read this well.

[@tenhovergonha7692]

He have a low latency mind

[@annusingh4694]

The clarity in his speech comes from the passion and clarity in his mind.

[@davidpike766]

He's great, and he does the 'hmm hmm' thing much less nowadays. They must have optimised his OS.

[@jacobyoung7000]

Carmack is like the perverted Yoda of software. "Like porn movie, VR is! From the scenery dialogue takes away! Mmmmmmm!"

[@NickEnchev]

That was his "I/O seek sound", he's been upgraded to an M2 drive.

[@SuperSkandale]

I think he altered his own code :)

[@iamlordstarbuilder5595]

This is hilarious. What version is CarmackOS on these days? I mean he can talk to *children* now.

[@iamlordstarbuilder5595]

@@sfulibarri ah yes, the expensive extra software update.

[@johnnsty]

Carmack just goes off! I love that about him,full of information and when he starts to speak you can really see the love for technology. You sir are my major inspiration when it comes to technology and programming. Massive respect for this guy!

[@HumansOfVR]

loved the 5 hour podcast he did with Lex recently!

[@DarthYasen]

8 Zenimax employees disliked this video.

[@AndreiNeacsu]

Every time I listen to John Carmack, I suffer a seizure of impostor syndrome where I doubt all of my knowledge and abilities.

[@ridespirals]

it's a toss up whether I'll be inspired or deflated

[@nicholasmaniccia1005]

I get the opposite man, he seems extremely down to earth, he makes it feel like knowledge is less of a gift from the gods, more of a self ascertained thing

[@Wobbothe3rd]

Important to realize that Carmack did everything he did with only high school level math concepts. 3D rasterization can be done with all linear algebra, trigonometry, very basic calculus and maybe matrix multiplication. Even on those terms, Carmack himself says that everything he'd ever done could be done better, including mistakes and oversights that he was embarrassed about in hindsight. In other words, his greatest successes were made with hard work and obsession - but NOT particularly superhuman intelligence and talent. Carmack himself is very humble even about his own proudest technical achievements, and even when he does give himself credit, he stresses the thousands of little small decisions rather than any stroke of genius.

[@shavedleggs5390]

@@Wobbothe3rd thanks for this

[@ducksoop.x]

Opposite for me, he brings back my initial intrigue with programming and computer science as a whole and why I even studied this field.

[@mkz1c]

I want Carmack technobabble me to sleep every night.

[@TheS0meguy]

@mkz1c #metoo 🍻

[@philbateman1989]

Create a playlist, I did. You actually take a lot of what he's saying on board, too!

[@t0ms3nt0ms3n]

How great would it be if he would bring out a series of "get to sleep easier" tapes :-)

[@cssplayer91]

Same. This man is an absolute genius

[@SapperUSMC]

here you go.... kzbin.info?search_query=john+carmack+keynote&sp=EgIYAg%253D%253D

[@NickEnchev]

Plot twist, he was lecturing at the wrong hall, but the gender studies students didn't say anything.

[@doomguy8324]

We are now friends...

[@alichamas63]

The real problem is that there is not enough diversity in John Carmack. Why does he have to be a white CIS white male? He should step down and allow someone from the ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789+ community to be John Carmack. Enough cruel oppression! Where's my Twitter account!

[@nicwilson89]

@@alichamas63 He's a hyper-intelligent alien artificial intelligence that came to Earth, he doesn't have a gender. Probably why the gender studies class invited him when they saw he was non-binary, as he's a quantum supercomputer rather than functioning on 1s and 0s binary systems :D

[@BubblegumCrash332]

@@nicwilson89 I'm offended by his intelligence. He is making micro aggressions towards people of normal intelligence. We must cancel Jon.

[@dougler500]

@@alichamas63 Hahaha

[@garryiglesias4074]

34:50 - We recognize here the father of Doom... He "fights like hell", when gesture joins the idea ;).

[@carltonbanks194]

Been a huge fan of John ever since I was like 5 years old. Followed his genius. The man is an absolute genius. I'd say he is the number 1 massively underrated/unrecognized human on the planet

[@icebough4191]

John Carmack is a real life genius, I love watching his interviews and listening to him explain things

[@Domarius64]

46:00 FINALLY! Yes, slow camera pans in modern videos always stutter!! And this is the first time I've ever seen someone point out the stuttering on modern video playback!! It's always frustrated me that not only have we not got this right yet for some reason, no one talks about it!! This never used to happen on old CRT TV systems.

[@mage0killer]

Revolutionized the whole 3D industry once with Doom and then Quake and then a few times over... hobbiest space rocket engineer and now also revolutionizing 3D all over again with VR... Oh and while he's at it he will just re-write digital video, why not?... John Carmack doesn't get as much attention as he should be getting. Hot damn.

[@MrExnihlo]

Tiago Almeida Who cares about any of that?! Elon Musk is way better! Did you know he invented a computer that runs soley on electricity?!!

[@breebw]

"Doom and then Quake". It largely ended there. Along came Unreal, Tim Sweeney, and the Unreal Engine powering many games today. Sweeney's software renderer(a render option for Unreal) was probably the biggest technical achievement in graphics software ever created. Everything else is incremental. Sweeney's engine powers 100:1 of 3D games compared to id tech. Carmack foundered with misguided steps. His backing of Intel graphics in the late 90s, and his eventual mega texture model throttled the Id Tech engines. He failed to keep Id software as a cohesive team in the development of Quake. As for the present day, Elon Musk is doing it in terms of space. VR is just another system that Carmack as siezed on, like that Intel thing in the 90's. VR might see its day in 10 years. By then Carmack will be focused on discovering something else. Dont get me wrong, he is gifted, and gaming has benefited hugely. But these days there are hundreds of Carmacks, that are making better decisions.

[@breebw]

"Doom and then Quake". It largely ended there. Along came Unreal, Tim Sweeney, and the Unreal Engine powering many games today. Sweeney's software renderer(a render option for Unreal) was probably the biggest technical achievement in graphics software ever created. Everything else is incremental. Sweeney's engine powers 100:1 of 3D games compared to id tech. Carmack foundered with misguided steps. His backing of Intel graphics in the late 90s, and his eventual mega texture model throttled the Id Tech engines. He failed to keep Id software as a cohesive team in the development of Quake. As for the present day, Elon Musk is doing it in terms of space. VR is just another system that Carmack as siezed on, like that Intel thing in the 90's. VR might see its day in 10 years. By then Carmack will be focused on discovering something else. Dont get me wrong, he is gifted, and gaming has benefited hugely. But these days there are hundreds of Carmacks, that are making better decisions.

[@davidwalz7081]

I was in the first couple rows of this room was feeling intense imposter syndrome, but this guy is a humble legend. He was a great speaker.

[@think41c]

Never heard a lecture of this caliber, for this length, with the complete and total lack of any "umm" between any sentence. Astounding. Also, the lecture itself was pretty good too. :)

[@zadeh79]

Carmack has such an incredible mind. It is half man, half machine.

[@user-xg8yy7yl1d]

Carmack is crazy in a good way. A damn genius of a programmer. Romero may have been the architect of DOOMs levels but without Carmack figuring out how to make the engine run and run on the slow hardware of the early 90s there wouldnt be FPS. Hes a master of optimization too making code run on the slowest system possible and he would often stay after everyone else had left frying to make things work as best as possible or working on a problem until it was solved

[@majinsnake]

Slowest system did not work much for me. My brother tried hooking up our Acer computer (Windows 95, 100 mhz) and HP computer (windows 98, 333 mhz) to run doom for modem play. It would not work at all. I only did modem play on the HP Computer connecting to the friend of my brother's computer and vice-versa for doom. The friend's computer was fast enough to keep up.

[@rafalkowalczyk5027]

very lucky audience, J.Carmack is engineering elite

[@cookie842]

I'd sooner see Carmack design a robotic vessel to house his brain for the rest of eternity. We know he's capable..

[@alan419barriga]

He can clearly do a presentation for over an hour and I’m here stuttering, shaking and sweating with a 3 minute presentation.

[@Bo-nk3ol]

He didn't start like this and you can get there too.

[@dmer-zy3rb]

yeah i mean carmack propably was (and maybe even still is) autistic. from what ive heard about him in his youth he maybe even was in some way severely autistic. but its not like he´d care.

[@axelprieto5644]

@Joey Mantka The names that their parents gave them were "John" (Carmack), "Mark" (Zuckerberg), "Bill" (Gates), "Steve" (Jobs)... Absolutely normal and ordinary names. The surnames might not sound super common, but that's because there is a handful of "common" surnames and then you have a long tail of less known surnames. IMHO, success is a mix of talent (genetics), hard work (practice and persistence) and luck (being in the right place at the right time). In the case of Carmack, he clearly is extremely gifted and he is well known for having a strong work ethic. I recommend you the book "Masters of Doom" if you want to know more about Carmack's early years.

[@RyNiuu]

He lives through what he explains. Normal people very rarely presents issues which they are passionate about. I have opportunity to present both sides of the spectrum. And I am two different people while doing both types of presentation. And it's not related to boredom. Those are lacking parts of the full picture which don't allow you to go with the flow, so the stress and stutter sometimes kicks in. On the other side, you have full knowledge at many scales. Like high-level points, process maps, value stream maps, steps and stories on each level. You also have nothing to be ashamed of while saying this is a detail where another person comes in to help and very briefly describe this person's area of expertise.

[@leezhieng]

Wait till you watch his 5 hours interview on KZbin (look it up)

[@teiturardal85]

this was youtube GOLD! thank you!

[@manny9639]

What a legend I just love learning from him

[@johnrich7879]

This is gold. Thank you!

[@alichamas63]

He's also a great teacher. His passion and enthusiasm for the subject matter is infectious, something which takes students a lot further.

[@davkdavk]

What an absolute beast

[@phils2967]

I can listen to him talk for hours. Just a constant stream of interesting stuff.

[@davekite5690]

LOL - love the idea of John 'Peeking' into his own laser retina display :-)

[@jjforcebreaker]

I've been listening to this guy for like 25 years and John is still fascinating.

[@conandoyle1740]

25 years and still not understand a thing lol

[@AlanBem]

Pure gold

[@MsGrooveOn]

I love Carmack lectures

[@JoeSavySC2]

This man is a pioneer.

[@emagotis]

@ 10:47 the idea vr-headset latency is causing nausea for poisoning prevention is really interesting!

[@FreekHoekstra]

its the same with overconsumption of alcohol, the body realizies its been poisoned, and tries to purge the poison from the system. :)

[@asdfasdfasdf12]

Great stuff, I love it even more to be an engineer.

[@QuakeWorldTeamFortress]

legend!!

[@faktorial2]

Great lecture, thanks for posting!

[@brycevanhorn7240]

Your passion for perfection is astounding. I love you attitude of why cant I do this, why cant we make this happen. This is what drives improvement.

[@semmler3499]

John is jacked! Glad to see it!

[@nemtudom5074]

Jogn Carmack is a person i would love to learn from, he feels like such a genuinely nice person

[@tyraelhermosa]

What a rock star.

[@SuperColdLemonade]

This man is greater than logic! I love this guy!

[@timmuh8436]

Such a worthy words sound since 9:00!

[@thatbastardson]

what an honor. the legend himself. im sure professor frink is carmack......

[@donaldbough3445]

The systems thinking is always so inspirational. Never being afraid to go a level deeper than what you actually own is a great skill.

[@ribeets]

Just a pure genius

[@whiterottenrabbit]

Great speaker, fun to listen to!

[@6663000]

John Carmack is a genius.

[@mlfconv]

Tries to go around a genius

[@NihilistGhost]

We are all geniuses in a way or another.

[@headman82]

The question is if that’s a blessing or a curse?

[@nickg9215]

Fastest hour of the day, I've never heard Carmack speak before... lucky students

[@TJPactronix]

This man is way ahead of humanity

[@mlfconv]

Someone else was

[@staaky]

Carmack building a rig to shoot lasers into his eyes for science gave me a total nerdgasm.

[@bitti1975]

@Joey Mantka "Bill/William Gates" is a really common name, if not to say "ordinary". "Carmack" can't be so uncommon either, if they had even the unrelated "Adrian Carmack" in the small id team which developed Doom. The reason these names sound so distinguished is because you're hearing them over and over again. So you're confusing cause and effect.

[@yavorasim]

Superb lecture! I loved the way he just casually mentions some technical challenges which arise from the industry and the public adoption and not inherently from the engineering complexity.

[@ericcornish1983]

Ahh yes John Carmack he is an amazing person, but also an instrumental person in industry today without his contributions we would not have many of the things that many people take for granted today!

[@CuriousCyclist]

Just discovered this channel. Really good lecture by a legendary software developer.

[@Atrak8]

Brilliant and Fascinating, what was really surprising to me was that I was able to understand and follow it.

[@SuperSkandale]

I love Carmack. His a supergenious on the one hand and on the other hand a die hard gamer / gamer fan. His absolutely right how gaming today has taken ginourmous steps backwards in latency. Most of it is contributed to display technology, but not all.

[@Cavs191]

Vaskedama demanding all games have 4K playback and 120fps mite not be ideal for every game

[@jackjr1]

I learned a lot from this and one of the first Carmack talks I actually fully understood

[@DarthYasen]

From watching a lot of these when you get to the point of understanding one, go back and watch one of the previous ones you've seen. It's like going over the hurdle of learning a new language. I know you might not have the mental capacity to endure another 1-2 hours of basically full on mental warfare, but trust me, it's worth it. You learn a lot, what he is saying here in a span of 1-2 hours will take you(and it probably took him) months / years to learn and understand properly. And the way he explains it is so smooth, it shows that he discovered these things on his own and not just read them up online or in a book.

[@MrSlashStudios]

I think his vocal skills have also improved in the past 10 years

[@Eric-uy7ee]

@@MrSlashStudios I believe you're right about that, i think i heard he got a lot of media training during the development of Rage.

[@thedddemon]

When he goes 'ayee', his brain runs a search function.

[@elcapitan6126]

it's kinda endearing. same goes for his "on there" "on that" usage

[@w0ode198]

You are awesome.

[@EspireMike]

Thanks UMKC for making this talk happen and for sharing it with the rest of the world!

[@Armawulf]

Doom will live forever. Thanks J.Carmack.

[@dazgodbold]

Sir this is a Wendy's

[@Cavs191]

“On there” seems like that is a verbal tick of his bc he says it so much lol

[@tensevo]

Sit Down - Shut Up - Listen & Learn - JC in da house.

[@cdurkinz]

Non-stop talking from start to finish, barely a stutter in between. It's amazing, every talk. And he's somehow always talking about something interesting. Just a constant flow of information and I don't think he memorizes any sort of script.

[@FreeScience]

Very inspiring. About "taking control" of technology, revealing the layers upon layers and allowing opimizing for your use case rather than the vendor-chosen one, for example benchmarking.

[@karlkarlsson9126]

Not only do I feel happy and smart listening to John Carmack, I actually do become smarter!

[@oberguga]

One way to augment fovieted view (sorry if misspelled) - combine eye tracking with coarse analysis of changing in scene. You should increase resolution where you looking, where are most changes happened(because it probably next point of interest) and use previous frame to enhance coarse rendered parts of current frame.

[@Massenko]

John is a genius

[@theholk]

The most amazing thing about Carmack is how he can basically call everyone everywhere incapable idiots, without actually saying it or getting worked up about it.

[@giampaolomannucci8281]

meanwhile Romero is still talking about Doom :D

[@MrM1729]

Or providing updates on the release of Da Katana /s

[@danlock1]

1) He did some great things with map design/etc. in Doom. People who do similar things in modern games should not forget or ignore the awesome design present in "old" games like Doom. 2) Most of the rest of us are not talking about anything because we don't have credentials with that much value.

[@AC3electrosphere]

And that's great.

[@tralphstreet]

Yeah, I like romero but I feel like he's still living in the past. He is clearly way past his prime, he has abilities, but he needs more than Doom now to stand out. He recently released a fifth episode for the original Doom. The original fucking Doom, dude come on.

[@ChrisS-nj3ye]

But Romero has cooler hair though : )

[@bigdaddy5303]

One of the smartest humans the world has seen. How lucky we are that he loved video games.

[@NihilistGhost]

Von Neumann, Davinci, Marconi, Oppenheimer... these are smarter.

[@karl7487]

@@NihilistGhost you didn't refute his statement

[@VirtuelleWeltenMitKhan]

Watching at 180% ...the irony. He is awesome at explaining all that stuff. I want to see his actual code.

[@phitsf5475]

I'm not a CS person but was roughly aware of who John was. I've just watched QuakeCon 2013 talk on light physics and rendering, and now I've watched this. His lectures are great and I might be hooked

[@Wobbothe3rd]

There's great stuff going all the way back to 1996, look up carmack keynotes on the internet archive. Also check out Michael Abrash's keynotes from 1998 and back.

[@NihilistGhost]

Genius is making complex ideas simple, not making simple ideas complex

[@LesiureBoy]

Omg, that beginning intro song was so "Friends."

[@user-bf5pk8lh3w]

Genius, Pionnier

[@monkeyrobotsinc.9875]

even the way he erases is smart.

[@MoosieSingh]

I didn't know this was ever posted online :o I was there! I have the blue hat at 1:20:13 :D -UMKC alumn

[@elcapitan6126]

this was a great lecture on there. would like to see more on that. ngmmmm

[@MarceloTezza]

The guy at the end wanted to start the applauses, a kept praying for sometime HUAHUAHAUHUA!

[@Jixejo]

i think its quite interesting to copy the body into the system architecture like that

[@hadriscus]

The off-hand "In one of the rocket ships that we built..." was amazing hahaha

[@TheNerd]

The amount of smart things that John Carmack says in 1 hour like ( Opportunity is the delta between what people have and what is possible ) is greater than most people say in their entire life. Incredible.

[@elcapitan6126]

if it werent for so much competition for peoples attention from mass entertainment and corporate advertising many more people could develop skills in this area and we could cultivate waaayy more dense monologues and discussions like this. alas most people are trained to have the attention span of a duck and would rather talk about sports or other entertainment trivia than engage with interesting and practical problem solving.

[@judgeomega]

all meat, no fluff. love him

[@goldnutter412]

1:06:35 Samurai mastered the art of moving in the low awareness bit of our FOV, and using environmental cues or outright distraction. It's because of how we prioritize data collection for local storage (brain)

[@ogmoustachemalefacialcompa3907]

John is unnervingly clever.

[@iamlordstarbuilder5595]

The way he’s talking reminds me of the time when I had to delete stuff on my Chromebook to make room for gamedev stuff, but milliseconds instead of megabytes and fiddling with hardware instead of being 100% stuck in software.

[@cish960]

Amazing person, note to self, never have John review your product. Awesome lecture. Would love to take this logic and apply it to Network transport.

[@giampaolomannucci8281]

I'll let him be the only one who can review my product, then make sure to adopt his critic and make a better version of it.

[@manchesterisblue1023]

pioneer

[@wolfgangfrost8043]

11:00 I've heard Dave D. Taylor who also used to work for id Software experienced that kind of 3D motion sickness even on Doom 1

[@Not-TheOne]

I miss the old id Software.... :( (love DooM 2016 though and very possibly the new DooM) Can I have some .plan updates again?

[@JethroRose]

as per the demoscene since forever - if you can fake it fast enough it is generally good enough (re: warping)

[@nicbarkeragain]

It's actually hilarious, as soon as he mentioned the stutter / hitching in video on digital monitors, I started noticing an audio hitch in this talk every 5-10 seconds

[@rafalkowalczyk8151]

i can't wait until he starts writing technical books about CGI

[@chillnspace777]

While you watch in VR

[@jeffjones719]

they all look frightened towards the end

[@NilsJakobson]

If every engineer cared about quality of their work in every aspect like John we would be in so much better situation technologically as a human race than now, where too many tricks and compromises and cost savings have made the entire technology stack so much more complicated to work with in order to achieve a high quality result. Now you pretty much have go down in every layer and correct something that has been done wrong or neglected.

[@IamFilter94]

Then every engineer would have to spend at least the same amount of time learning as John, have as good conditions for it as he did. That's just impossible, dude.

[@will5948]

@@IamFilter94 If you read most of his .plan "blogs", it's quite clear that learning and writing Quake was more important to him than the rest of his life (bar blowing up Ferrari engines). I've never met anyone who comes close. He's a machine.

[@j.cdenton2403]

Carmack is great :)