The man behind era defining games as Quake and Doom, John Carmack, has joined the team behind the Oculus Rift virtual reality gaming project.

John Carmack ID software Joins Oculus Rift
John Carmack, co-founder of id Software has joined the Oculus Rift project as chief technology officer.

Carmack, who is one of the co-founders of id Software, will join Oculus as chief technology officer. Oculus Rift is a prototype virtual reality headset which allows gamers to immerse themselves completely in a gaming environment.

Announcing the news, Oculus said:

"We have incredible news to share with the community: legendary game programmer John Carmack will be officially joining the Oculus team as our new Chief Technology Officer (CTO)."

Must Read: Oculus Rift Preview

In a statement, Carmack said:

"I have fond memories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming - the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods, and so on. Duct taping a strap and hot gluing sensors onto Palmer's early prototype Rift and writing the code to drive it ranks right up there.

"Now is a special time. I believe that VR will have a huge impact in the coming years, but everyone working today is a pioneer. The paradigms that everyone will take for granted in the future are being figured out today; probably by people reading this message. It's certainly not there yet. There is a lot more work to do, and there are problems we don't even know about that will need to be solved, but I am eager to work on them. It's going to be awesome!"

Prototypes

Early prototypes of the Oculus Rift headset are currently in the hands of developers to alllow them create games around the new technology with a consumer version due sometime in 2014.

According to Eurogamer, Carmack has left his role at id Software as part of the move, having helped create such titles as Quake Doom

John co-founded id Software, served as lead programmer on Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and the Quake series, and is one of the pioneers of 3D graphics. He is also involved in a space startup called Armadillo Aerospace.

Oculus was begun as a Kickstarter campaign but Carmack was involved from very early on, and was in fact the very first developer to actually integrate the Rift into a game, back when the hardware was just a hand-held prototype without an SDK.