Link talks about the developing between 360/PS3 from developers point of vies.

2 min video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PFUw29U4J8&NR=1

That video is like a half a year old or somthing...

But there was some other news from Carmack today...

Pictures from his new game engine, to run on PC, Mac, PS3 and Xbox 360..

http://www.n4g.com/industrynews/News-44688.aspx

This development from Carmack sounds very interesting, because his comments suggest that the id Tech 5 engine is a completely new approach where it renders AND 'paints' the models internally from the engine, as opposed to building colorless solids, then painting them with pictures (textures) fetched from memory. It sounds as though there is a conversion process in the development cycle that converts the original hi-res assets to engine coordinate/color values, and brings that directly into the engine code, so everything is rendered, colored and shaded, in real-time.

For lack of a better example, this actually sounds like a verbatim implementation of how the Nintendo 64 rendered its images, albeit on a far greater and more complex scale given today's powerful CPUs.

The implication (and I'm entirely reading between the lines here -- I honestly don't know) is that Carmack is giving the finger to the GPU (which is the bane of developers and an ever-moving target) and the GPU memory subsystem, and instead harnessing the power of the CPU to "brute-force" images out of the engine. If this is the case, it has some very far reaching implications:

1) Graphics cards and console GPUs, as we know them, would be rendered obsolete at the end-user level.

2) Development costs would be cut substantially because the game engine builds surfaces on the fly, so studios would not have to pack multiple sets of textures for varying resolutions and manufacturer/models of graphics adapters.

3) The PS3's raw power would (presumably) finally distinguish itself from the XBox 360.

Consider: http://www.n4g.com/industrynews/News-44688.aspx

"What we've got here is the entire world with unique textures, 20GB of textures covering this track. They can go in and look at the world and, say, change the color of the mountaintop, or carve their name into the rock. They can change as much as they want on surfaces with no impact on the game."

Contrast with the comment here: http://kotaku.com/gaming/update/id-shows-off-new-engine-on-mac-267790.php

"The new id rendering technology practically eliminates the texture memory constraints typically placed on artists and designers and allows for the unique customization of the entire game world at the pixel level, delivering virtually unlimited visual fidelity. Combined with a powerful new suite of tools designed specifically to facilitate and accelerate the content creation process, id Tech 5 will power games that contain vast outdoor landscapes that are completely unique to the horizon, yet have indoor environments with unprecedented artistic detail."

It would be interesting to see what type of games they develop for the engine, and if it will become a standard?

Who is John Carmack?

He created Doom. Basically one of two or three people most responsible for the birth of the First Person Shooter genre in the 90s.

Nowadays, he's known for his in depth knowledge of cutting edge graphics, and is most noted because he comes at those graphics from a developer perspective. Instead of a Microsoft/Sony person telling us why they're hardware is so awesome, he explains how it feels to actually be writing for different platforms.

His base of operations is still the PC, as far as I know, and the Mac/360/PS3 development branches off from there. Doom 3 was their last project.  

As far as I know he moved his main developmentplatform over to the Xbox 360.. At leaste he thought about going there:

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2164&Itemid=2

"The Xbox 360 will probably will be id's primary development platform. As it is right now, we would get the game up on the 360. When I would do major hack-and-slash architectural changes it was back on the PC, but it’s looking like the Xbox 360 will be our target. All of our tools are on the PC, and we’re maintaining the game running on the PC, but probably all of our gameplay development and testing will be done on the Xbox 360. It’s a really sweet development system."

As already said, he is the man behind the game engines from Doom and Quake. And the laste couple of years, he has used most of his weekends to build rockets:

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home

Read up a bit on id Tech 5 and see that this dev is actually going the other direction in regards to textures, using megatextures. So, instead of having, say ... 1000s of 512x512 textures creating the landscape and having to align each piece this way or that way, the engine throws one blanket texture of ~128,000x128,000 onto the models. A single landscape texture of up to 20Gb covers the whole thing, and pieces are streamed as needed to draw to the display. The benefit is that developers can then texture their textures, not have to cut up elaborate set pieces and then realign them piece by piece on models, while also giving players the ability to modify terrain models on the fly, with the megatexture 'warping' around those modifications.

Sounds like cool stuff. The Wii def. won't be able to run it! ;)

Cause that's what the 360/PS3 need to diversify their their shrinking demographic... more First Person Shooters...

Who said it would be a FPS?