John Carmack Speaks on DX10, Vista, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii

[s18000rpm]

Industry authority and rocket scientist John Carmack shares his views on the latest software and technology


When John Carmack speaks, the industry tends to listen. While it can be argued that his influence today on the gaming industry isn’t as big as it was when nearly every 3D shooter was using one of his Quake engines, he is still regarded as part of the heart of that keeps PC gaming alive. He continues to influence gaming hardware too, especially in the area of graphics. In fact, NVIDIA and ATI consult with John Carmack on design decisions when engineering new GPUs.

Carmack and id Software were recognized last week with two Technology Emmy Awards from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for the areas “pioneering development work in 3D game engines” and “technological leadership in rendering breakthroughs with the Quake technology.”

At CES, Game Informer magazine sat down with John Carmack and Todd Hollenshead of id Software to discuss many facets of the game industry as it applies to both PCs and consoles. Right away, Carmack confirms that he is working on a new engine for a completely new franchise not based on any of the company’s currently existing intellectual properties. Carmack said that Quake Wars, which is based on an upgraded Doom 3 engine, will not be a DX10 game.

On the topic of DX10, Carmack said that there’s nothing at the moment motivating him to move to the new API just yet for Quake Wars, citing that he’s quite satisfied with DX9 and the Xbox 360. “DX9 is really quite a good API level … Microsoft has done a very, very good job of sensibly evolving it at each step--they’re not worried about breaking backwards compatibility--and it’s a pretty clean API,” he said. “I especially like the work I’m doing on the 360, and it’s probably the best graphics API as far as a sensibly designed thing that I’ve worked with.”

Gamers often look to Carmack to tell the fortunes of PC gaming hardware. His opinions on hardware can sway hardcore gamers to purchase one hardware choice over another. Those in awe of the potential offered by DX10 may want to hold off on that shiny graphics card purchase, as Carmack says that there isn’t a huge need for new hardware just yet, as current hardware is more than adequate. “All the high-end video cards right now -- video cards across the board --are great nowadays,” he said. “Personally, I wouldn’t jump at something like DX10 right now. I would let things settle out a little bit and wait until there’s a really strong need for it.”

Those wishing to take the plunge into DX10 will also have to do so while upgrading to Windows Vista. Carmack, however, isn’t all that excited about upgrading to the new OS: “We only have a couple of people running Vista at our company. It’s again, one of those things that there is no strong pull for us to go there. If anything, it’s going to be reluctantly like, ‘Well, a lot of the market is there, so we’ll move to Vista.’”

Carmack then said that he’s quite satisfied with Windows XP, going as far to say that Microsoft is ‘artificially’ forcing gamers to move to Windows Vista for DX10. “Nothing is going to help a new game by going to a new operating system. There were some clear wins going from Windows 95 to Windows XP for games, but there really aren’t any for Vista. They’re artificially doing that by tying DX10 so close it, which is really nothing about the OS ... They’re really grasping at straws for reasons to upgrade the operating system. I suspect I could run XP for a great many more years without having a problem with it,” he said.

Then on to the topic of multi-core gaming systems. Carmack has expressed his dislike for multi-cores, but with the two high-powered new generation consoles both making use of multiple cores, it may be something he just has to deal with. He says of the Xbox 360: “Microsoft has made some pretty nice tools that show you what you can make on the Xbox 360 [with the multi-cores] … but the fundamental problem is that it’s still hard to do. If you want to utilize all of that unused performance, it’s going to become more of a risk to you and bring pain and suffering to the programming side,” he laments. “So we’re dealing with it, but it’s an aspect of the landscape that obviously would have been better if we would have been able to get more gigahertz in a processor core. But life didn’t turn out like that, and we have to just take the best advantage with it.”

As far as the PlayStation 3 goes, Carmack isn’t thrilled at the lack of developer support in comparison to what he’s received from Microsoft. Nevertheless, he plans to support Sony’s console with his next generation engine and games. “We’ve got our PlayStation 3 dev kits, and we’ve got our code compiling on it. I do intend to do a simultaneous release on it. But the honest truth is that Microsoft dev tools are so much better than Sony’s,” he comments. “I think the decision to use an asymmetric CPU by Sony was a wrong one. There are aspects that could make it a winning decision, but they’re not helpful to the developers … It’s not like the PlayStation 3 is a piece of junk or anything. I was not a fan of the PlayStation 2 and the way its architecture was set up. With the PlayStation 3, it’s not even that it’s ugly--they just took a design decision that wasn’t the best from a development standpoint.”

Finally, the console wheel spins to the company from Kyoto, which Carmack says that id Software has never “been that tight with.” He does express his respect of Nintendo’s courage to take a different direction with input methods in controlling games, but his current and next generation of game technology is not targeted at the Wii.


Source:::DailyTech
Info on John Carmack

[rahul_becks23]

thanks , thats the best post i've seen on this shi* forum , thanks again .
In btw. , still waiting for a new post by John for a long time on his blog.............. i wonder when he's updating it again .

[Pathik]

nice info... thx... btw @ rahul y do u think this is a sh*t forum???

[Tech Geek]

thanks for the info

[rahul_becks23]

cuz thers so less posts like the above ..... and i am right , u know that .

[Arsenal_Gunners]

Good post..
Yeah, we need more rocket guys to comment on gaming.Maybe they will now write walkthroughs of san andreas

[rahul_becks23]

hey , fuc* u man ........... u noob and non-gamer .
John is a game - programmer first and rocket - science is his other interest , infact he's the best game programmer on this planet ( no discussions on this, its true as the word true itself ) .

He's not a rocket scientist commenting on gaming..........he's the fuc*in world's best game programmer commenting on gaming .

[Arsenal_Gunners]

^^Its Ok if you call me abusive words and a noob.But I was just kidding and you didn't got the joke.I very well know who he is and always listen to his views.
Just for your information I have played a countless number of games and I call myself a true gamer.

[s18000rpm]

Thanks guys.

btw rahul_becks23, i just copy-pasted the contents from the source link, & did some modification (bold, color).

& Vimal, what does the last sentence mean in ur post

[rahul_becks23]

well , ok ok buddy ...... sorry if i saw the other side of ur post ... am really sorry ......... but ur post really looked like shi* ........ any john's fan would have said u like this....... but what the hell...... am sorry for getting u wrong .

[Arsenal_Gunners]

@s18000rpm I was called a non gamer-I was answering that.

[rahul_becks23]

??? ...... i dont get it ......

[s18000rpm]

no not that dude, about the post #6

[Arsenal_Gunners]

@Rahul_Becks23 Just forget it mate.
__________

Originally Posted by s18000rpm

no not that dude, about the post #6

About that I meant if rocket guys are taking so much interest in gaming they will soon write the reviews and walkthroughs of games.(Just having fun, again)
And I love john(don't take it in the other way)

[rahul_becks23]

as u say ......

[gxsaurav]

John carmack is God of gaming industry

However, all his statements are based on the gaming specific model of DirectX 10, he cannot deny the fact that how much rendering & work overhead is reduced by moving to the new API

MS is not forcing DX10 with Vista. Remember DX 10 is not just an update to DX 9c, it's a compleately new API written from scratch with the new graphics driver model, which treats the GPU as a programable processing unit. You can even do mathmatical calculation on the GPU using DX 10 now, folding@home anyone...

DX 10 cannot be ported back to XP, cos the API is compleately changed & so is the driver model. MS will need to re-write the graphics part of the kernal again for Windows XP, it's better to impliment in Windows Vista with new WDDM insted of old XP, which is not compatible & will require many changes

[s18000rpm]

nice info gx.