| Developer(s) | id Software |
|---|---|
| Written in | C++ |
| Platform | |
| Predecessor | id Tech 5 |
| Successor | id Tech 7 |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | idsoftware |
id Tech 6 is a multiplatformgame engine developed byid Software. It is the successor toid Tech 5 and was first used to create the 2016 video gameDoom. Internally, the development team also used the codenameid Tech 666 to refer to the engine.[1] The PC version of the engine is based onVulkan API andOpenGL API.
John Carmack started talking about his vision regarding the engine that would succeedid Tech 5 several 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.
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 tracing and classicraster graphics would 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.
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An early version of the fourth mainDoom game was being built on id Tech 5 but id Software restarted development in late 2011 to early 2012, afterBethesda expressed concerns about its creative and technological direction. When development was restarted it was decided to begin with the id Tech 5-basedRage codebase but take "big leaps back in certain areas of tech" and "[merge] Doom features to Rage".[9]
Doom was 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 rendering has also been confirmed.[14] A technical analysis ofDoom found 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,SMAA andTSSAAanti-aliasing,directional occlusion,screen spacereflections,normal maps, GPU acceleratedparticles which 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]Caustics are 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 theCryEngine atCrytek, 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]
| 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 |
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
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.
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.
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.
'And we're in research for id Tech 6 graphics, content development…yeah, I'm super busy,' he said.
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