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> From my memory of the early rift I am positive that outside of Palmer it was Carmack's genius that made this viable and Carmack's video lent credibility to the campaign.

I'm positive of this. Palmer spotted an opportunity to use phone screens + MEMS sensors for cheap VR and garnered public support for his prototype by presenting it as an open source gadget.

Carmack thought it was cool, and brought his name, time, resources, business acumen and legendary development skills, got it running Doom 3. Next thing you know they have a million dollar Kickstarter and are pulling in massive rounds of funding.



Seems like both were necessary. Palmer had an idea and made a prototype, Carmack came in and helped spearhead the execution into a business.

Isn't that a fairly standard way that startups get started?


Well yeah, isn't that what the GP was saying? Palmer had the initial idea and cobbled together a very basic proof-of-concept, Carmack then did the heavy lifting.


Carmack was already doing the MEMS sensor stuff a bit before, attaching it to a Sony HMZ and using gyro code from his rocket company.




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