In the early 1990s, John Carmack was the lead programmer at Id Software, where he helmed some of the video game industry’s most innovative and iconic game series, including Wolfenstein 3d, Doom, and Quake. Carmack is currently the chief technology officer for the Facebook-owned Oculus VR, and this week he spoke at Game Developers Conference 2015 in San Francisco about the current state of mobile VR and where the technology is heading in the future.

“I think I can say that virtual reality is bigger than gaming, ” Carmack said. “Virtual reality we talk about as this final platform, as this new way that people are interacting with computers. And that’s still a good thing for gaming.”

He added, “I honestly do see a world with a billion people using virtual reality headsets.”

He does not believe a an expensive PC peripheral or game-focused VR device will be the tool that reaches that lofty number, but he says “we do have a path to that, and that’s with mobile technology.” The future of VR, he says, is through the already dominant platform of mobile technology such as smartphones and tablets, and “the VR headset of our dreams” will be wireless and fully mobile.

But Carmack admits that the “headset of our dreams” is not yet here and probably will not be for a few years.

“Poisoning the well”

While Oculus has made great strides in legitimizing VR, Carmack says that the team constantly worries about “poisoning the well,” fearing that if a substandard VR device enters the market, it could “set the industry back to the ’90s,” which saw several failed VR companies that “left huge smoking craters in the landscape.”

According to Carmack, a failed VR system could scare away investors and make it harder to push the technology forward. Carmack referred to this as one of the “nightmare scenarios that keep CEOs awake at night.”

Carmack notes that Oculus is getting closer to perfecting its system ahead of a full release, and he says that the Gear VR device developed for Samsung will likely see a wide consumer release later this year.

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