by , 10:00 AM EST, February 22nd, 2001
Featured in the keynote alongside the GeForce 3 was a showing of Doom III by id Software's John Carmack, who walked us through the very first viewing worldwide of the new Doom III engine in all it's glory, utilizing the newest technology offered by the amazing GeForce 3 by nVIDIA.
Incredible effects that we have never before seen in computer games have just launched Mac gamers into a new age of realism in gaming. Lighting that behaves as it should, casting real time shadows and reflections on a pixel by pixel rather than a vertex by vertex basis. No more cheap tricks as seen in earlier engines such as Quake, Quake 2 or even Quake 3 that made the illusion of lighting effects but never really reached a convincing level. All they achieved was a rough attempt to bamboozle our senses into thinking what we saw was real lighting effects. Now, as seen in the Doom III first peek Carmack gave us at MACWORLD Expo Tokyo, lighting behaves realistically across every detail of every scene in a most impressive fashion.
Cinematic Drama has been very difficult to achieve in computer gaming up until now. In the demo Carmack displayed some very moody and dark (go figure) scenes in which he explained that with this new technology offered by the GeForce 3, gaming can now take advantage of drama within the game engine itself, greatly increasing the realism and consequently the entertainment value of computer games. Overall, John Carmack was gushing over his demo and what the GeForce 3 can do for gaming, and his excitement illustrates how important the announcement of the GeForce 3 really is to the gaming industry. Like Carmack said, this is a very exciting time for computer gaming and graphics professionals and we are beginning to see doors open into a more realistic future in our favorite games.
To view the keynote featuring the GeForce 3 announcement and the demonstration of the Doom III engine by John Carmack of id Software, go by C|net and take a look. To view the clip you must look to the far right under the heading "News.com On Air" and scroll down to "Jobs introduces "amazing" GeForce 3" link.