The idea that we only have 2D input doesn't make sense to me. If that were the case, how would we drive a car or ride a bike? You don't need to jump between focusing on things that are far away and up close, as Carmack says. It's totally natural.
I would argue that humans, like most mammals, are actually most at ease in an immersive 3D medium.
And in theory, the only thing stopping us from implementing something like Bret Victor's Dynamicland (https://dynamicland.org) in VR is the lack of good 3D input methods, like say a pair of sensor-ridden smart gloves.
John Carmack's argument reminds me of the early criticisms of the point-and-click interface (2D), and how at its inception it was much less efficient than the well developed command line interface (1D).
Plus, the most designers are trained in 2D interfaces so they're probably applying the wrong assumptions for 3D.
2D + depth. We can tell how far away the car in front of us is, but it occludes our view of cars in front of it. That’s good enough to drive, but suboptimal. If you were designing a user interface meant to show someone the positions of cars on roads – i.e. a map – you would use a bird’s-eye view, since roads are mostly 2D from that perspective.
I bet one getting poked has more to do with it than you think. We have two lungs too after all and they're a lot less exposed than your eyes. I use that redundancy with a disturbing amount of regularity when biking too... with something getting in one eye and temporarily disabling it (I really need to look into some form of eye protection from road dust).
But thinking of depth in vision like color also makes a lot of sense, it's extra information but not an extra "physical" dimension. You can't see inside a sphere but you can a circle.
I can think of even more ways we benefit from having two eyes, like not having to whip your head back and forth if you want to scan the landscape.
But if they were mainly for redundancy the eyes might be closer together, like the nostrils (and unlike ears, which help with spatial awareness).
I think the fact that modern life requires less and less depth perception (when’s the last time you had to judge how far to throw a spear, etc) might be leading us astray here.
I would argue that humans, like most mammals, are actually most at ease in an immersive 3D medium.
And in theory, the only thing stopping us from implementing something like Bret Victor's Dynamicland (https://dynamicland.org) in VR is the lack of good 3D input methods, like say a pair of sensor-ridden smart gloves.
John Carmack's argument reminds me of the early criticisms of the point-and-click interface (2D), and how at its inception it was much less efficient than the well developed command line interface (1D).
Plus, the most designers are trained in 2D interfaces so they're probably applying the wrong assumptions for 3D.