Interview with John Carmack!

[Dima]

http://www.beyond3d.com/interviews/carmackdoom3/

[BillyBlaze]

I love reading interviews with carmack cos he loses me after just a few words. heh, I also like thinking about his funny speech thing after every sentence.
top guy tho.

[Naked Snake]

Damn, Dima, I'm starting to think that you are stalking John Carmack!

[Lord FlatHead]

I'll let Zaldron handle this one. I've been studying for my Math exam all weekend, I'm not ready for a whole bunch of more math :/

[Dima]

bigbadgangsta said:

Damn, Dima, I'm starting to think that you are stalking John Carmack!

Me? :)

Nah, I used to stalk one girl I currently in Love with in my school (not on purpose, I just wanted to see her all the time).
That proved to be one BIG mistake :(

[Zoost]

These interviews start to annoy me, beacause i'm news hungry for DOOM3 I have to read everything, but I understand nothing. It adds nothing to what i don't allready know, namely the fact that doom3 looks fantastic.

Oh but...

Temp=NormalMap dot3 LightDirection
Temp=Temp mul AttenuationMap

Ahhhhhhh, Now I understand.

Doom3 is going to look fantastic

[Dark-tenshi]

good job as always Dima.
well,i want more people interview other id staff like Tim Willits.

[Dima]

Shacknews was lucky enough to get an answer from the man himself about 64bit processors:

Q: "Assuming that the Hammer CPU is out within 3 months of D3's release, and Windows ?? 64bit is also out, what do you think the chances are of a 64bit binary for Doom 3? - slim? - none? - "mildly possible" - or damn certain?

A: Slim. A 64 bit binary is likely to be slightly slower than a 32 bit binary, because pointers will consumer more memory bandwidth. You only get a speed benefit from 64 bit when you need long integers, or you need to access more than (roughly) 2 gigs of memory.

[dark santaclaus]

whata hell the passes are?, wich card did they say was better, readeon 8500 or geforce4 ti 4600?

[Naked Snake]

Dima said:

Me? :)

Nah, I used to stalk one girl I currently in Love with in my school (not on purpose, I just wanted to see her all the time).
That proved to be one BIG mistake :(

Dima almost got castrated :P
Actually, whenever I see you post here, I instantly click, because you don't show up often, but when you do, Goddamnit, it is sure as Hell worth the read.

[Lord FlatHead]

dark santaclaus said:

whata hell the passes are?, wich card did they say was better, readeon 8500 or geforce4 ti 4600?

Radeon's better, GF4 is faster.

[dsm]

Lord FlatHead said:

Radeon's better, GF4 is faster.

Define 'better' in this case, please.

[Mogul]

Didn't Carmack just say that the 8500 would be a faster card for this game?

[Alientank]

He said that the Radeon took less passes then the TI4600, but the 4600 keeps more stable framerates...or something like that

[AndrewB]

I'm confused by the article. Can anyone decipher what John Carmack's bottom line was when speaking of GeForce2/Radeon7500 and lighting? Will those cards use static lightmap lighting as in RTCW, or some kind of dynamic lights? Carmack uses Radeon 7500 and and per-pixel lighting in the same sentence. What does this mean?

And upgrading my laptop's Radeon 7500 is out of the question.

[Lord FlatHead]

AndrewB said:

Will those cards use static lightmap lighting as in RTCW, or some kind of dynamic lights?

Umm I'm not entirely clear on just what they're talking about either, but Doom III certainly won't be using any lightmaps, for the simple reason that there is no lightmap phase in the map compile. It's likely going to be somewhat crappy dynamic lighting on older cards.

[Zaldron]

Lord FlatHead said:

It's likely going to be somewhat crappy dynamic lighting on older cards.

That's not what the article sugests. Play at 320x240 and you'll have only 76,800 pixels to individually shade. Based on that example from nVidia thing you made me download a few weeks ago, that should run decently. The polycounts will probably chug the transform process like a real bastard, and I guess the precision might be a bit lower.

I don't see a good damn reason to play this game without dynamic lights. That's like turning off the creatures altogether.

[Disorder]

WTF? I justed posted a thread with a link to the same article and now it's GONE!! Dima stole it!!

[Zaldron]

It's called forum cleaning.

[AIRmichael]

Lord FlatHead said:

I'll let Zaldron handle this one. I've been studying for my Math exam all weekend, I'm not ready for a whole bunch of more math :/

Lord Flathead and Zaldron, sitting in a tree:p

[AndrewB]

Well if Doom 3 will run at 320x240 at 20FPS with shadowcasting light effects, I'll be happy as a clam in heat.

[Naked Snake]

AndrewB said:

Well if Doom 3 will run at 320x240 at 20FPS with shadowcasting light effects, I'll be happy as a clam in heat.

Wtf? Clams can be in heat?

[Amanichen]

bigbadgangsta said:

Wtf? Clams can be in heat?

I'm horny right now, doesn't that stand for something?

And oh yeah...

Neat article, it's the best 404 I've ever seen.

[EsH]

AndrewB said:

I'm confused by the article. Can anyone decipher what John Carmack's bottom line was when speaking of GeForce2/Radeon7500 and lighting? Will those cards use static lightmap lighting as in RTCW, or some kind of dynamic lights? Carmack uses Radeon 7500 and and per-pixel lighting in the same sentence. What does this mean?

All the lights are (potentially) dynamic in Doom3 as an absolutely nessesary part of the gameplay, I understand, so there won't be a "light map" mode. Carmack mentioned the possibility of a "per-vertex" lighting mode (basically, no bumpmapping, and stuff looks like angular, QuakeIII crap) just so the low of the low can play the game too (graphics aren't everything...I guess), but I think he might have thrown that out the window.

The issue with the GeForce1/2/4MX cards is that it takes more "passes" to get the same effect than it takes on a more advanced graphics card. Basically, a "pass" is a separate rendering of all the characters and scenery models. When a scene takes "five passes to render", all the models are actually rendered five times, before you get to see anything your screen. What Carmack is implying is that, on a GeForce2~, each place (or "surface"), where a light hits, has to be rendered five times, for each light hitting that surface, before the scene can be displayed. This is a LOT of work for a low end card. In contrast, for a GeForce3 each light/surface would only have to be drawn two or three times.

Also, The GeForce2/4MX doesn't have what is called vertex shader capability, which is nessesary for the dynamic models to be bump mapped entirely by the graphics card. This means, in addition to all those five passes... per light... per surface, the CPU still has to pick up some of the slack with these cards. This makes stuff even slower, because the CPU has to spend it's time helping the graphics card, and not doing it's own work (on the gameplay, for instance)

This is why lower end GF's (and I guess lower end Radeons) much slower than higher generation cards. Several people from the company have stressed that while Doom3 will work on these lower end cards, Doom3 should be enjoyed on a GeForce3+ card. You still get "per-pixel" bumpmapping on GF1/2/4MX, but like Zaldron pointed out, it will probably be at DOOM1 screen resolutions in order to keep the framerate acceptable. If you have a big interest in playing games next-generation games like Doom3, you probably should just wait till GeForce3 cards come down in price, and just get one of those. As Carmack would say, this is the "Right" thing to do. If you don't play games that much, and just don't feel like shelling out the money, though, you can still get bumpmapping on a GF1/2/4MX, per-pixel, and basically correct. I imagine it will still look quite amazing, even on a low end machine, compared to what you've probably seen already in games.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope this helps.

[AndrewB]

Thank you for that insightful and informative post. Couldn't have been more of what I was looking for.

[mmnpsrsoskl]

Looks like i'll be upgrading to a GeForce 3 then...if I can save the cash before DooM III comes out.

[Lord FlatHead]

EsH said:

Sorry for the long post,

Oh, don't be. I like long posts, as long as they're as informative as yours.