Id Tech 6
| Developer(s) | id Software |
|---|---|
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One |
| Type | Game engine |
| License | Proprietary |
id Tech 6 is a multiplatform game engine developed by id Software. It is the successor to id Tech 5 and was first used to create the 2016 Doom video game. Internally, the development team also used the codename id Tech 666 to refer to the engine. The PC version of the engine is based on OpenGL API and additionally Vulkan API is also supported through patch updates.
John Carmack started talking about his vision regarding the engine that would succeed id Tech 5 years before the latter debuted in Rage, but following his departure from id Software in 2014, Tiago Sousa was hired to replace him as the lead renderer programmer at the company.
On June 24, 2009, id Software was acquired by ZeniMax Media. It was later announced that id Software's technology would be available only by other companies also belonging to ZeniMax Media.
In 2008 and while id Tech 5 had yet to be fully formed, John Carmack said the next engine by id Software would be looking towards a direction where ray tracing and classic raster graphics would be mixed. The engine would work by raycasting the geometry represented by voxels (instead of triangles) stored in an octree. Carmack claimed that this format would also be a more efficient way to store the 2D data as well as the 3D geometry data, because of not having packing and bordering issues. The goal of the engine would be to virtualize geometry the same way that id Tech 5 virtualized textures. This would be a change from past engines which for the most part use mesh-based systems. However, he also explained during QuakeCon 08, that the hardware that would be capable of id Tech 6 did not yet exist at the time.
In July 2011, Carmack explained that id Software was beginning research for the development of id Tech 6. It's unknown if Carmack's vision of the engine at the time was still the same he described in 2008.
An early version of the fourth main Doom game was being built on id Tech 5 but id Software restarted development in late 2011 to early 2012, after Bethesda expressed concerns about its creative and technological direction. When development was restarted it was decided to begin with the id Tech 5-based Rage codebase but take "big leaps back in certain areas of tech" and "[merge] Doom features to Rage".
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