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id Tech 6

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id Tech 6
Developer(s)id Software
Written inC++
Platform
Predecessorid Tech 5
Successorid Tech 7
LicenseProprietary
Websiteidsoftware.com

id Tech 6is a multiplatformgame enginedeveloped byid Software.It is the successor toid Tech 5and was first used to create the 2016 video gameDoom.Internally, the development team also used the codenameid Tech 666to refer to the engine.[1]The PC version of the engine is based onVulkanAPI andOpenGLAPI.

John Carmackstarted talking about his vision regarding the engine that would succeedid Tech 5several years before the latter debuted inRage,but following his departure from id Software in 2014, Tiago Sousa was hired to replace him as the lead renderer programmer at the company.

On June 24, 2009, id Software was acquired byZeniMax Media.It was later announced in 2010 that id Software's technology would be available only to other companies also belonging to ZeniMax Media.[2]It was followed up byid Tech 7.

Preliminary information

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In 2008 and while id Tech 5 had yet to be fully formed, John Carmack said the next engine by id Software would be looking towards a direction whereray tracingand classicraster graphicswould be mixed.[3]The engine would work by raycasting the geometry represented byvoxels(instead of triangles) stored in anoctree.[4]Carmack claimed that this format would also be a more efficient way to store the 2D data as well as the 3D geometry data, because of not having packing and bordering issues.[3]The goal of the engine would be to virtualize geometry the same way that id Tech 5 virtualized textures.[5][6]This would be a change from past engines which for the most part use mesh-based systems. However, he also explained duringQuakeCon 08,that the hardware that would be capable of id Tech 6 did not yet exist at the time.[7]

In July 2011, Carmack explained that id Software was beginning research for the development of id Tech 6.[8]It's unknown if Carmack's vision of the engine at the time was still the same he described in 2008.

Eventually, the plans for a rendering approach with voxel-based raycasting were abandoned in favor of conventional mesh-based rasterization.

Technology

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An early version of the fourth mainDoomgame was being built on id Tech 5 but id Software restarted development in late 2011 to early 2012, afterBethesdaexpressed concerns about its creative and technological direction. When development was restarted it was decided to begin with the id Tech 5-basedRagecodebase but take "big leaps back in certain areas of tech" and "[merge] Doom features to Rage".[9]

Doomwas first shown to the public duringQuakeCon 2014,where it was confirmed it was running on an early version of id Tech 6.[10]The developers' goals when creating the engine were described as being able to drive good looking games running at 1080p on 60 fps but also reintroduce real-time dynamic lighting which was largely removed from id Tech 5.[11]The engine still uses virtual textures (dubbed"MegaTextures"in id Tech 4 and 5) but they are of higher quality and no longer restrict the appearance of realtime lighting and shadows.[12][13]Physically based renderinghas also been confirmed.[14]A technical analysis ofDoomfound that the engine supportsmotion blur,bokehdepth of field,HDR bloom,shadow mapping,lightmaps, irradiance volumes,image-based lighting,FXAA,volumetric lighting/smoke,destructible environments,water physics, skinsub-surface scattering,SMAAandTSSAAanti-aliasing,directional occlusion,screen spacereflections,normal maps,GPU acceleratedparticleswhich are correctly lit and shadowed, triple buffer v-sync which acts like fast sync, unified volumetric fog (every light, shadow, indirect lighting affects it, including water caustics / underwater light scattering), tessellated water surface (on the fly without GPUtessellation.[citation needed]Causticsare dynamically generated and derived from water surface), andchromatic aberration.[15]On July 11, 2016, id Software released an update for the game that added support for Vulkan.[16]

Following Carmack's departure from id Software, Tiago Sousa, who had worked as the lead R&D graphics engineer of several versions of theCryEngineatCrytek,was hired to lead development of the rendering.[17][18]Bethesda's Pete Hines has commented that while id Tech 6 reuses code written by Carmack, most of the decisions made about the engine's direction were taken after he left.[13]

Games using id Tech 6

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Year Title Developer
2016 Doom[19] Id Software
2017 Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus MachineGames
Doom VFR id Software
2019 Wolfenstein: Youngblood MachineGames
Arkane Studios
Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot

See also

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References

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  1. ^McElroy, Griffin (July 17, 2014)."The new Doom game is just titled 'Doom,' runs on id Tech 6, and more details".Polygon.RetrievedMay 18,2016.
  2. ^Graft, Kris (August 13, 2010)."id Tech 5 Rage Engine No Longer Up For External Licensing".Gamasutra.Archived fromthe originalon August 16, 2010.RetrievedSeptember 27,2017.
  3. ^abShrout, Ryan (March 12, 2008)."John Carmack on id Tech 6, Ray Tracing, Consoles, Physics and more".PC Perspective.Archived fromthe originalon October 1, 2016.What John does see ray tracing useful for is a very specific data model he has created called "sparse voxel octrees" that allow him to store immense amounts of data in a fashion that is easily accessed using ray tracing methods(...) This new data model and algorithm being worked on for id Tech 6 would allow, according to John, nearly infinite amounts of geometric detail in the world without the problems seen with tessellation engines or trying to store gigabytes of data locally
  4. ^Olick, Jon (2008)."Current Generation Parallelism In Games"(PDF).UC Davis.id Software.Archived fromthe original(PDF)on March 1, 2012.RetrievedNovember 12,2010.
  5. ^Smith, Will (July 15, 2008)."E3 2008: The John Carmack Interview. Rage, id Tech 6, Doom 4 Details, and More!".Maximum PC.Archived fromthe originalon July 17, 2008.I still think there's one more generation to be had where we virtualize geometry with id Tech 6 and do some things that are truly revolutionary. (...) I know we can deliver a next-gen kick, if we can virtualize the geometry like we virtualized the textures; we can do things that no one's ever seen in games before.
  6. ^Shrout, Ryan (March 12, 2008)."John Carmack on id Tech 6, Ray Tracing, Consoles, Physics and more".PC Perspective.Archived fromthe originalon March 14, 2010.RetrievedJanuary 3,2010.This new data model and algorithm being worked on for id Tech 6 would allow, according to John, nearly infinite amounts of geometric detail in the world without the problems seen with tessellation engines or trying to store gigabytes of data locally.
  7. ^Chan, Norman (July 31, 2008)."QuakeCon 08: id Tech 6 Will Utilize Hardware That 'Doesn't Exist Right Now'; Next-Gen Will Still Be Polygon-Based".Maximum PC.Archived fromthe originalon January 28, 2010.id Tech 6, for example, probably won't be coded in Java or any protected language. It also will be designed for hardware that doesn't exist right now. With new discrete graphics players entering the field (Larrabee, Fusion, etc), Carmack knows that the PC space is relevant, and that's where he'll be looking when thinking about coding his next engine.
  8. ^Brightman, James (July 27, 2011)."Doom Creator More Excited About Games Now Than Ever".IndustryGamers. Archived fromthe originalon March 18, 2012.RetrievedAugust 1,2011.'And we're in research for id Tech 6 graphics, content development…yeah, I'm super busy,' he said.
  9. ^Schreier, Jason (April 3, 2013)."Five Years And Nothing To Show: How Doom 4 Got Off Track".Kotaku.Gawker Media.RetrievedMay 18,2016.
  10. ^"Powering DOOM with id Tech 6".Bethesda Softworks.September 1, 2015.RetrievedFebruary 12,2022– viaYouTube.
  11. ^Bishop, Samantha (September 5, 2015)."Doom debuts the new id Tech 6 engine".GameZone.RetrievedMay 18,2016.
  12. ^Doom Tech Analysis: The Best-Looking 60fps Console Shooter?.Digital Foundry.May 18, 2016.Archivedfrom the original on December 20, 2021.RetrievedMay 18,2016– viaYouTube.
  13. ^abTakahashi, Dean (June 17, 2015)."Bethesda wins the attention war by blasting marketing rules for Doom, Fallout 4".VentureBeat.RetrievedMay 18,2016.
  14. ^Palumbo, Alessio (September 2, 2015)."Take A Look At DOOM's id Tech 6 In This Video Interview".WCCFtech.RetrievedFebruary 19,2016.
  15. ^Linneman, John (May 21, 2016)."Face-Off: Doom".Eurogamer.RetrievedJune 11,2016.
  16. ^Duffy, Robert (July 11, 2016)."DOOM – Vulkan Support Now Live".Bethesda.net.RetrievedJuly 11,2016.
  17. ^"John Carmack's Replacement at id: Tiago Sousa (Crytek)".pcper.com.July 19, 2014.RetrievedMay 18,2016.
  18. ^@idSoftwareTiago (July 18, 2014)."Happy to announce i'll be helping the amazingly talented id Software team with Doom and idTech 6. Very excited:)"(Tweet).RetrievedMay 18,2016– viaTwitter.
  19. ^"Why id Software is calling it 'Doom' and not 'Doom 4'".VG247.July 18, 2014.
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