John Carmack is stepping back from Oculus to work on artificial intelligence

John Carmack, who was recently announced as the recipient of the first-ever Accenture VR Lifetime Achievement Award, has announced that he is stepping back from VR development. Carmack said in a Facebook post that, as of this week, he'll transition to "Consulting CTO" at Oculus VR--until now he was the regular, everyday CTO--which will enable him to have a voice in future development, while only taking up "a modest slice of my time." Carmack said that his previous efforts in game development, aerospace engineering (on top of everything else, Carmack is literally a rocket scientist), and VR have always afforded him some degree of a "line of sight" to solutions. Now he wants to see what happens when he doesn't have that advantage. "I have sometimes wondered how I would fare with a problem where the solution really isn't in sight," he wrote.