I love John Carmack. I love John Carmack a great deal. A bona fide technical genius, he's like the modern-day equivalent of crackpot medieval alchemist, always pottering around in his lab and occasionally surfacing tononchelantly unleash another reality-bending innovation on the unsuspecting world. If he wanted to, he could get Crysis 2 running on a household blender at 120 frames per second, and he wouldn't even act like it was a big deal.
As we reported last night, his latest proclamation of 'Screw you, I am the mighty Carmack' came yesterday at his opening Quakecon keynote. Having teased a little 'neat and unannounced' surprise earlier in the week, he revealed that unassuming little item to be Rage, id's insanely beautiful upcoming shooter, running at a creosote-smooth 60 frames per second on the iPhone. And while a tad cut down from its PC and console brothers, it's a spectacular sight to behold. And we now have video of the presentation.Scroll downand feast your eyes.
Yikes, right? And you thoughtN.O.V.A.was impressive. While iPhone Rage is only a tech demo at the moment, it's being built up into two versions of the game, one a small 'show-off' version this year, and the other a full adaptation next year alongside the main release. We doubt it'll be on the same scale as the PC and console versions, but whatever structural form iPhone Rage takes, it's going to be technically mind-blowing. With the same mega-texture technology as the big versions and some beautiful lighting - whether dynamic or not - running so insanely smoothly, it could seriously change people's perceptions of iPhone gaming.
So what do you reckon? Impressed by Carmack's latest magic trick, or will you be waiting for the full-sized big screen versions regardless of what he's pulled off?
