John Carmack , co-founder and technical director of id Software, gave a wide-ranging and detailed talk at QuakeCon 2013 in Dallas yesterday, addressing a series of issues that affect developers and consumers in the gaming industry. Well-known for his work on games like Doom, Quake and Rage, of particular interest were Carmack's comments on display technology and the way in which it may affect next-generation hardware like head-mounted displays.
"I had a couple of experiences, just in the last couple months," Carmack said. "I was looking at something, I was in a shop, I saw something up there and was startled when it moved, that it was a video signage rather than something statically printed there."
"We are really most of the way there with display technology, when I am mistaking displays for reality, but there are still things that can get better on it."
Viewing angle is almost a "dead issue," according to Carmack, and the gaps between pixels are also improving as screen resolutions gets better. Another area he pointed to that could have a dramatic effect on all areas of gaming is the fact that display technology is already "amazingly cheap" and getting more affordable all the time.
"There is a picture of me that was in some magazine that showed me with two LCD screens, square aspect ratio, that were 1280 x 1024 many, many years ago," Carmack said. "I paid $10,000 each for those IBM displays. And if you think about it, a couple hundred dollars now gets you a good 1920 x 1080p display. That's the miracle of modern electronics and that's a really, really good thing."
Carmack called the movement in the display industry to develop and sell high-resolution, screen resolution improves.
"It seems ludicrous, but we're going to have 4K tablets and mini-tablets in not too many years, and that'll make just a dandy head-mounted display," Carmack said. "So there's going to be some value coming out of it, but I think that is going beyond the knee of curve in benefits to consumers again."
Part three is above, but be sure to check out parts 1 , 2 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , which include a Q & A as well.
