John D. Carmack
| John D. Carmack | |
|---|---|
Carmack at the 2010 GDC
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| Born |
August 20, 1970 Roeland Park, Kansas |
| Residence | Heath, Texas |
| Occupation |
CTO, Oculus VR, Inc. Founder, Armadillo Aerospace |
| Known for | Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Rage |
| Spouse(s) | Katherine Anna Kang |
| Children | 2 |
John D. Carmack (born August 20, 1970) is an American game programmer, aerospace and virtual reality engineer. He co-founded id Software. Carmack was the lead programmer of the id video games Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Rage and their sequels. Carmack is best known for his innovations in 3D graphics, such as his famous Carmack's Reverse algorithm for shadow volumes, and is also a rocketry enthusiast and the founder and lead engineer of Armadillo Aerospace. In August 2013, Carmack took the position of CTO at Oculus VR, which in 2014 became a subsidiary of Facebook.
Carmack, son of local television news reporter Stan Carmack, grew up in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area where he became interested in computers at an early age. He attended Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, Kansas and Raytown South High School in nearby Raytown, Missouri.
As reported in David Kushner's Masters of Doom, when Carmack was 14, he broke into a school to help a group of kids steal Apple II computers. To gain entry to the building, Carmack concocted a sticky substance of thermite mixed with Vaseline that melted through the windows. However, an overweight accomplice struggled to get through the hole, and opened the window, setting off a silent alarm and alerting police. John was arrested, and sent for psychiatric evaluation (the report mentions 'no empathy for other human beings' and describes Carmack as 'a brain on legs'). Carmack was then sentenced to a year in a juvenile home.
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