John Carmack "not all that excited" by next-gen hardware • Hacker News Board

Re: John Carmack "not all that excited" by next-gen hardware

#71

Post by starship » Mon, Jun 25, 2012, 8:26 PM UTC

JVIDEL wrote: post #61

starship wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1990's were fifteen years ago. Since then Carmack has spent 60 hours per week writing code for every conceivable console, PC, and mobile platform. Most people in his position would have moved into management by this point, he chose not to. As a result he has more expertise on more topics than just about anyone else in the gaming industry. And more than most in computer science generally. If he has an opinion on s…

I'm not saying he doesn't know what he's talking about, he just never liked consoles, he was always a PC guy and if he were truly "excited" about the nextgen that's like hearing Armstrong will quit riding bikes and be a F1 pilot.

And I'm saying, your opinion is stuck in the 1990's. John Carmack was very excited about both the xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii. He's just not excited about the next generation because, in comparison to the most recent generation, he believes we're at diminishing returns for having more and more powerful 3d graphics. Which is exactly why he's taking VR headset development into his own hands.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE3DF1E30F... "The Xbox 360 is the first console that I've ever worked with that actually has development tools that are better for games than what we've had on PC" -John Carmack

http://www.ripten.com/2011/08/14/john-carmack-thinks-the-ps3... "His keynote lasted more than 90 minutes and throughout, you could clearly tell that John had become a fan of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console"

He was also excited about the innovation in the Wii remote controller, and the Wii is what he plays with his kids.

Re: John Carmack "not all that excited" by next-gen hardware

#72

Post by MikeCapone » Tue, Jun 26, 2012, 3:01 AM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #54

MikeCapone wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quake1 and quake3 are the only id games that are remembered not only for their tech advancements (and of course, commander keen). I would say that Doom belongs at the top of that list.

I don't know, maybe. In my mind doom1 was too much of a "superwolfenstein", only 2 players max., no immersive ambiance (that is subjective of course). But it's a given fact doom1 was a major stepstone. As far as I am concerned I don't remember a lot of good moments with doom1 (on the other hand Q1 MP did :) Maybe I was playing too much console games at that time though, or maybe replaying kirandia or flashback for th…

Maybe it's an age thing? How old were you when it came out?

That game changed my life. It was the most immersive, scariest thing ever. It was 4 players (not 2), and we had endless LANs and modem games. We made maps, there were whole map-making communities, whole BBSes only talking about Doom and Doom 2 and Heretic and other games based on it.. It was the biggest thing ever, even bigger than Quake in many ways because there was a lot fewer similar games at the time. I played through the single player so many times that I can revisit most maps in my mind 15+ years later...

Even the book Masters of Doom is mostly about how that game was created, rather than Quake or other id games that came before or after because Doom truly was the game changer.

Re: John Carmack "not all that excited" by next-gen hardware

#73

Post by BlackAura » Tue, Jun 26, 2012, 6:11 AM UTC

Aldor wrote: post #65

phoboslab wrote: post #12

I love how Carmack is constantly pushing the industry forward. He made raycasting engines when everyone else was still doing 2D stuff. He made fully 3D games when everyone else was still using raycasting. He built a game engine with completely dynamic lighting, when everyone else was still relying on lightmaps and some cheap hacks. Arguably Duke Nukem 3D looked better than Quake, but polygonal was the future. Half-Li…

Didn't Half-Life 2 have dynamic lighting?

Not really. The lighting in Half Life 2 was based on static lightmaps. They were very fancy lightmaps, which enabled them to use techniques such as normal mapping or specular reflections, which are normally incompatible with lightmaps, but they were static lightmaps nonetheless.

It has some dynamic lighting effects, the same way Quake did them (modifying the lightmaps). It could also do projected shadows and self-shadowed objects using shadow maps, but not on world geometry.

I believe that the current source engine has some kind of dynamic lights. Either that, or Portal 2 did a fantastic job of faking them.

Still, that was 2011. Doom 3 came out in 2004, and exclusively used dynamic lighting, without a static lightmap in sight.

Re: John Carmack "not all that excited" by next-gen hardware

#74

Post by JVIDEL » Tue, Jun 26, 2012, 6:35 AM UTC

starship wrote: post #71

JVIDEL wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying he doesn't know what he's talking about, he just never liked consoles, he was always a PC guy and if he were truly "excited" about the nextgen that's like hearing Armstrong will quit riding bikes and be a F1 pilot.

And I'm saying, your opinion is stuck in the 1990's. John Carmack was very excited about both the xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii. He's just not excited about the next generation because, in comparison to the most recent generation, he believes we're at diminishing returns for having more and more powerful 3d graphics. Which is exactly why he's taking VR headset development into his own hands. http://query.nytimes.com/…

We still know next to nothing about the nextgen, nothing has been said about it, who knows what he'll say once they show the nextBox and PS4?