If you look back at when things like tablets and smartphones were first invented, or the Newton at Apple, that was the first attempt at VR. We didn't even have 3D GPUS, or were just getting them.
When we wrapped Resident Evil, we were a 3D movie, but it was no big deal. And then, Avatar came out and the whole of Hollywood was like, "Look at these grosses! 3D is huge. Let's all be 3D!" We just got on with doing what we were doing, which was making what we think is a really quality, kick-ass 3D movie, and we'll really be the first live-action 3D movie of the year.
The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player. Nor were the iPhone and iPad the first in their categories. The real reason for the success of these devices - the true unsung hero at Apple - is the iTunes software and iTunes Store. Because Apple provided them, it wasn't just selling hardware.
When I first started, in 2006, it was an exciting time. Independent, cool, weird artists were being successful, and magazines were writing about them, and people were getting played on radio that were, like, really good.
I remember the different things that were happening to my family as we were getting situated and buying our first home in southwest Detroit, watching my mother learn how to drive for the first time.
I started a company called Pixel Qi and the principal of as we're going, smartphones were happening, but as we go forward, the predictions were five devices per person. Do you want to charge each one of those every night to try to get them on a full charge when you're walking around? Smartphones don't even last a day without a recharge now.
If you were the first person ever to design an application for the iPhone and you patented it, you would be very, very better off than we are right now, you know? But you've got to be the first one to do it. So I figured that Led Zeppelin or the Stones were going to do it unless we just got on to it. So I got cracking with the guys from Apple.
Even as a child, I just leaned towards the scary. I remember seeing Halloween, for the first time. I snuck into the theater and was sitting there with a group of friends in the front row, and I turned back to look at the audience. They were screaming and interacting with the screen and were interacting with Jamie Lee Curtis as she walked through that horrible night. I just thought, "I want to do that."
Men... look back on the children who were once themselves, and attempt to reconstruct them. But they can no longer think like the child.
I feel like we were so naive when we first got started, we didn't even know we'd be around for two years, given how tough it was when we were first starting out.
Everything we did was a first: first bath, first walk, first drive in the car. It was like we walked into an alternate universe that looked just like the old one, but all the rules were different and we had to relearn how to live.
If you look back to the most spectacular blow ups in history, you can always tie them to a couple things: They were extraordinary complicated strategies that maybe even the practitioners themselves didn't understand, and they were overleveraged.
..if a special geometry has to be invented in order to account for a falling apple, even Newton might be appalled at the complications which would ensue when really difficult problems are tackled.
Grandad taught me that the alien signs and symbols of algebraic equations were not just marks on paper. They were not flat. They were three-dimensional, and you could approach them from different directions, look at them from different ways, stand them on their heads. You could take them apart and put them back together in a variety of shapes, like Legos. I stopped being scared of them.
I'm convinced that the Christian claim is really true, that this is just a warm up to the big event. That this is just the appetizer to the feast, and if we can plug into that and understand that this part of our story is just the introduction, it is not even the first line of the first paragraph, it's just the first letter or first word. We are just getting started.
What's really astounding to me is a lot of the guys at Oculus VR and other companies who were creating VR tell me that 'Ready Player One' is one of their primary inspirations in getting into virtual reality.
I did attempt to find out if there were any secret government documents that revealed things. If there were, they were concealed from me too. And if there were, well I wouldn't be the first American president that underlings have lied to, or that career bureaucrats have waited out. But there may be some career person sitting around somewhere, hiding these dark secrets, even from elected presidents. But if so, they successfully eluded me...and I'm almost embarrassed to tell you I did (chuckling) try to find out.