"’Oh my god, are you kidding me? We don’t have to worry about texture limits any more? That’s a huge breakthrough. That’s our number one problem in development,’" quoted id Software’s Steve Nix while talking to GamesIndustry about developers’ responses to the new id Tech 5 engine.
This upgrade to id Tech 4 features an essentially unlimited texture memory, making game development a heck of a lot easier. As Nix says:
"…all the textures are virtualised on everything…So you have unlimited texture memory…With the virtualised texture system, we completely eliminate [texture quality reduction]. You can lock down the geometry and the gameplay and put a number of artists simultaneously working on the world and they can just make it look better and better and better until finally you’re at the point where the game looks as good as you need to ship. It’s a huge paradigm shift in the way game developers can work."
He also went on to compare id Tech 5 to Epic’s Unreal Engine 3, saying:
"We have the PS3, the 360, the PC and the Mac all running at a very high frame-rate – basically all running at 60fps right now – and what’s really unique is that when an artist builds an asset they don’t know what they’re building it for. They build the exact same model, the exact same level, and it doesn’t matter what platform they’re putting it on. That’s a huge breakthrough. A lot of times you’d have your PS3-optimised assets, your Xbox-optimised assets, your PC-optimised assets, and at the end of the project you’d do this ugly Mac port. If not an ugly PC port. We think that the fact developers can cleanly simultaneously develop all four platforms is a huge change."
That sounds like a huge boon to developers, and may very well result in some sweet cross-platform titles in the future.
