Id Tech 5

Infobox Software
name = id Tech 5



caption =
developer = id Software
operating_system = Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
genre = Game Engine
license =
website = [http://www.idsoftware.com/business/idtech5/ id Software Website]

Originally dubbed "Doom 4 engine" (a name which is now deprecated), id Tech 5 is the name of the new game engine developed by id Software. The name follows id's new naming scheme, which gives information about the generation of the engine (for example the "Doom 3 engine" is now called "id Tech 4"). This was done so people wouldn't build too strong an association with the in-house game anymore.It was demonstrated for the first time at the WWDC 2007 by John Carmack on an eight-core Apple Macintosh computer; however, the demo only used a single core and a single-threaded OpenGL implementation running on a 512 MB 7000 class Quadro video card.citeweb|author=Gaminggroove.com|title=Cain's Carmack Quickie|url=http://www.gaminggroove.com/newsitem.php?id=9045]

The engine was shown to potential licensees at E3 2007, but not to the public. The first real public demonstration took place at QuakeCon 2007cite web|author=IGN|title=E3 2007: id Into the Future|url=http://pc.ign.com/articles/804/804112p2.html|accessdate=2007-07-14] during the annual keynote held by John Carmack. The game engine will be used in id's upcoming games, "Doom 4" and "Rage.

In an interview, John Carmack indicated that, like its predecessors, id Tech 5 will eventually be released as open source. This will likely be many years after id Tech 5 has been used in commercial games. At the QuakeCon 2007, John Carmack, the lead graphics engine developer at id, said to LinuxGames that he would integrate as little proprietary software as possible into id Tech 5, because "eventually id Tech 5 is going to be opensource also. This is still the law of the land at id, that the policy is that we’re not going to integrate stuff that’s going to make it impossible for us to do an eventual open source release." [http://www.linuxgames.com/archives/9374 LinuxGames - Embrace your inner penguin ] ]

Features

The focus of id Tech 5's features are centered predominantly on development. Rendering features and performance will be competitive, but unlike the unveiling of previous id technologies, the demos of id Tech 5 have talked more about the advantages to developers as opposed to players.

The demonstration with which the new game engine was shown had 20 GB of texture data (using a more advanced MegaTexture approach using textures with up to 128000x128000 pixel resolution) and a completely dynamically changeable world. This means that developers do not have to concern themselves with memory constraints or texture limits, as the engine will stream textures into memory as needed. This will simplify the creation of content and eliminate the need to adapt content for different platforms.

One of the features the renderer will include is a penumbra in the shadowing, by using shadow maps. This is unlike the shadowing of the id Tech 4 engine, which had very sharply defined shadows, with no penumbra.

John Carmack mentioned in his keynote at QuakeCon 2007 that the id Tech 5 engine will be OpenGL and DirectX 9 based, thus not requiring DirectX 10 to run. [citeweb|author=TheInquirer.net|title=Rage rages against the DX10|url=http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/08/06/rage-rages-against-the-dx10|accessdate=2008-04-02] .

The engine is cross-platform, making it possible to render the same models on different platforms without the developer having to write different code for each platform. This reduces the complexity of deploying a game on multiple systems. [citeweb|author=Gamespot.com|title=E3 Q&A: id's Nix on Tech 5 Engine licensing|url=http://www.gamespot.com/news/6175061.html|accessdate=2007-07-15]

The engine comes with new content creation tools called id Studio which are supposed to be much more user-friendly and polished than in earlier versions. Previously, content creation required artists to run various command line tools besides the level editor. Unlike the engine, id Studio works only on Windows.

The engine will likely feature a number of other graphical effects such as various materials for lighting, high dynamic range rendering-centric effects, depth of field, and motion blur. The engine will also support multi-threaded processing on the CPU for many of its tasks, including rendering, game logic, AI, physics, and sound processing.

id Tech 5 is not a shooter-only technology. The engine will also work well outside the shooter genre: Steve Nix from Id Software "Not only do we think people can make games outside the action-shooter space with our technology, we encourage it. We'd actually like to see those games made." . [citeweb|author=Gamespot.com|title=E3 Q&A: id's Nix on Tech 5 Engine licensing|url=http://www.gamespot.com/news/6175061.html|accessdate=2007-07-15]

Games using or licensing the ID Tech 5 engine

*Rage
*Doom 4

ee also

*List of game engines
*First person shooter engine
*Quake engine
*Quake (series)

References

External links

* [http://www.idsoftware.com/ id Software]
* [http://www.idsoftware.com/business/idtech5 id Software Technology Licensing site for id Tech 5]
* [http://www.idsoftware.com/business/press/index.php?date=20070611000000 id Tech 5 press release]

Media

*youtube|HvuTtrkVtns|John Carmack demonstrates id Tech5 at WWDC 2007
* [http://www.quakeunity.com/file=2514 Matt Hooper demonstrates id Tech5 at QuakeCon 2007]