John Carmack No Longer Enthused About AMD's Mantle?

[somebodyspecial]

Cormack is a lost sole, I used to respect this man, but now realize he is nothing but an Nvidia worshiper, look at all his interviews over the last year or so, he is kissing Nvidias ass, I used to have alot of respect for the man that gave use quake, NOW i DONT GIVE A SHIT what he says, he took sides when he should be embracing the need to omit Microsoft DLL files, windows is a killer for games, to may layers to get games running at top speed.

This guy likes OPENGL...That isn't windows or directx.

I see nothing wrong with a dev saying who is better when we all know it is NV right now. You are constantly having to put up with AMD or wait for fixes. But I don't see him kissing NV's butt, just admitting Gsync etc is pretty darn cool which EVERYBODY that has seen it has said and he wasn't alone on stage bragging about it. Epic was there, Dice was there. You hate all top devs then I guess...LOL.

 

[airborne11b]

re: Carmack

Carmack is one of the smartest guys, if not the smartest in the game programming world. If you watch some of his presentations which are on Youtube it would be obvious. He's not out of touch in the slightest. If anyone here was a serious programmer they'd know that.

As for the first comment about Carmack "switching sides"; it never happened. He made a comment about next-gen being faster than PC but he was talking about the AVERAGE PC not high-end gaming PC's and he was absolutely correct.

Carmack's well known as an advocate of open-source. He wants one good API solution not five different ones creating a nightmare for programmers.

He's saying if Mantle isn't going to for next-gen consoles then WHY would game devs want to deal with that for PC when they already have a solution for console that works on PC. Think about it, would you write a cross-platform game then port it like THIS:
a) PC with AMD cards using Mantle
b) PC with NVidia cards using some NVidia API solution (the "panic" thing he mentioned)
c) XBONE DX API
d) PS4 OPENGL API

So really, let's just focus the ecosystem on improving what we have with DX and OPENGL. It comes down to COST people, and while Mantle could make sense for a couple games it's fiscal suicide to recode a game that already runs well using DX just to squeeze out a little more performance.

Another correct comment Carmack made recently was basically this
"I'd love to be able to fully optimize every game from an aesthetic standpoint, but it's not practical from a budget standpoint."

Another related comment was how much time and money they spent optimizing the code at the end just trying to make the game work in the limited processing and memory space (take note PS3 Skyrim players). Game devs mostly do not care about getting every last drop of performance now that they've got more power and memory. If they push the limits too much they have to spend a lot of money optimizing to avoid issues like running out of RAM.

It all comes back to the BUDGET, and few game devs are going to invest in Mantle if they don't see it affecting game sales enough.

Exactly. The people here knocking John Carmack have no idea what they're talking about. Carmack is one of the most influential game programmers of all time and he continues to innovate to this day.

People saying "Oh gee what have you do lately? Doom 3 Rehash!?" No, he's been working on actually technology, namely the Oculus Rift. John Carmack is a genius, legendary programmer and anyone who says otherwise is either not a programmer or a trash talking wanna-be / no-name.

 

[bystander]

Exactly. The people here knocking John Carmack have no idea what they're talking about. Carmack is one of the most influential game programmers of all time and he continues to innovate to this day.

People saying "Oh gee what have you do lately? Doom 3 Rehash!?" No, he's been working on actually technology, namely the Oculus Rift. John Carmack is a genius, legendary programmer and anyone who says otherwise is either not a programmer or a trash talking wanna-be / no-name.

It wouldn't matter who he was. He could be God for all they care. If they bad mouth the company they are so passionate about, they attack.

 

[airborne11b]

Exactly. The people here knocking John Carmack have no idea what they're talking about. Carmack is one of the most influential game programmers of all time and he continues to innovate to this day.

People saying "Oh gee what have you do lately? Doom 3 Rehash!?" No, he's been working on actually technology, namely the Oculus Rift. John Carmack is a genius, legendary programmer and anyone who says otherwise is either not a programmer or a trash talking wanna-be / no-name.

It wouldn't matter who he was. He could be God for all they care. If they bad mouth the company they are so passionate about, they attack.

Sounds about right. You can see how baseless their assertions are in the posts themselves. Anyone who knows about the history of video games, or video game programming, in any real depth can cite at least a couple innovations John Carmack had a hand in.

It's not about the "Games" he made, but rather the technology behind the games that paved the way for massive industry-wide improvements. He was basically the mastermind behind a ton of code engineering that drastically improved video games.

For example, adaptive tile refresh, raycasting, binary space partitioning, surface caching, Carmack's Reverse, and MegaTexture. He's now been working heavily towards making VR a reality over at Oculus.

It takes a lot of education, talent and intelligence to create video games. It's another whole level of intelligence to create innovative new methods for others to use in making video games.

Anyone who thinks this man isn't worth listening to seriously has no clue. This isn't to say that everything he says is going to be 100% true, but his concerns and feelings are well worth considering seriously.

 

[bystander]

Sounds about right. You can see how baseless their assertions are in the posts themselves. Anyone who knows about the history of video games, or video game programming, in any real depth can cite at least a couple innovations John Carmack had a hand in.

It's not about the "Games" he made, but rather the technology behind the games that paved the way for massive industry-wide improvements. He was basically the mastermind behind a ton of code engineering that drastically improved video games.

For example, adaptive tile refresh, raycasting, binary space partitioning, surface caching, Carmack's Reverse, and MegaTexture. He's now been working heavily towards making VR a reality over at Oculus.

It takes a lot of education, talent and intelligence to create video games. It's another whole level of intelligence to create innovative new methods for others to use in making video games.

Anyone who thinks this man isn't worth listening to seriously has no clue. This isn't to say that everything he says is going to be 100% true, but his concerns and feelings are well worth considering seriously.

That's definitely the right way to view Carmack. He is the one behind all the tech that moved use from 2D to 3D gaming (not the stereoscopic kind) and is working on getting us to stereoscopic virtual reality as well with the Oculus Rift.. He is a software engineer at heart. A game engine designer. He may not be a great game designer, or an artist, but his contributions to the technology cannot be denied.

That said, Mantle may work, but it definitely comes at a cost, one John Carmack is qualified to speak about.