Legendary game developer John Carmack has stepped down from his position as VR firm Oculus' chief technology officer.

In a post on the company's parent Facebook, the Doom creator said that he was moving to a consulting CTO position and he wants to start working on artificial intelligence.

"I will still have a voice in the development work, but it will only be consuming a modest slice of my time," he wrote.

"As for what I am going to be doing with the rest of my time: When I think back over everything I have done across games, aerospace, and VR, I have always felt that I had at least a vague “line of sight” to the solutions, even if they were unconventional or unproven. I have sometimes wondered how I would fare with a problem where the solution really isn’t in sight. I decided that I should give it a try before I get too old.

"I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence (AGI).

"I think it is possible, enormously valuable, and that I have a non-negligible chance of making a difference there, so by a Pascal’s Mugging sort of logic, I should be working on it.

"For the time being at least, I am going to be going about it 'Victorian Gentleman Scientist' style, pursuing my inquiries from home, and drafting my son into the work."

Carmack is the latest long-serving member of staff to leave the virtual reality firm. Former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe left Facebook in October 2018, while designer and co-founder Palmer Luckey left in March 2017. VP of VR Hugo Barra stepped down in May of this year to take on a more partner-focused role.