Doom co-creator John Carmack is making software at Oculus Rift

One of the biggest names in game development moved into hardware in 2013, but that doesn’t mean he’s done making software.

Oculus VR chief technology officer John Carmack is working on software that will show off the capabilities of the company’s Oculus Rift headset, according to an Engadget report. The virtual-reality head-mounted display wraps around a player’s eyes and immerses their vision in a head-tracking 3D screen. This makes gamers feel like they are really in the digital world.

So far, Oculus has worked with partners like Epic Games to provide the software to demonstrate what it is like to look around a virtual environment, but Oculus now has its own teams developing something of its own.

Naturally, that team involves Carmack, who is best known for co-creating games like Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein 3D at developer Id Software.

“[Carmack’s] working on a lot of exciting tech,” Oculus VR chief executive Brendan Iribe told Engadget. “But his heart and soul and history certainly lies in the game-development side.”

Oculus wants to make its own software to not only show other studios and consumers what the VR device can do but to also help it better understand the nuances of its own product. This is similar to what Epic does with its Unreal graphics engine. Epic uses Unreal to make its own products, like Gears of War, but that software helps the company improve the Unreal engine that it then licenses out to third-party companies.

To bolster its development efforts, Oculus is planning to hire more developers in 2014

Carmack joined Oculus VR as its CTO in August. In November, he left id after more than 20 years with the studio to focus exclusively on his work with the virtual-reality company.