id Software
Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake: the engines that defined the first-person shooter and real-time 3D rendering.
Digital archive · born 1970
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John Carmack
Code, 3D, VR, AI.
A documentary archive.
id Software · Oculus · Keen
About this archive
An engineer who moved the frontier.
John Carmack (born 1970) is one of the most influential programmers in video games. From the corridors of Wolfenstein 3D to the halls of Doom and the arenas of Quake, he pushed the limits of real-time 3D rendering on consumer hardware, one generation of hardware at a time.
This archive gathers his career, timeline, games and engines, and technical innovations, with sources to dig deeper. An independent documentary project, with no affiliation.
Portrait: an illustration made for the archive, a stylized rendering and not a photograph. See the Sources page.
Four chapters
The arc of a career.
Four frontiers, taken one after another: the PC, the 3D engine, virtual reality, AI.
Open source
Releasing the engines under the GPL: preservation, ports, and a culture of sharing that has grown rare in the industry.
Virtual reality
CTO of Oculus (2013-2022): the software architecture that made mobile VR smooth and accessible.
General AI
Since 2022, Keen Technologies: a personal bet on artificial general intelligence.
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