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Carmack Speaks On Ray Tracing, Future id Engines
Vigile writes "As a matter of principle, when legendary game programmer John Carmack speaks, the entire industry listens. In a recent interview he comments on a multitude of topics starting with information about Intel, their ray tracing research and upcoming Larrabee GPU. Carmack seems to think that Intel's direction using traditional ray tracing methods is not going to work and instead theorizes that using ray casting to traverse a new data structure he is developing is the best course of action. The 'sparse voxel octree' that Carmack discusses would allow for 'unique geometry down to the equivalent of the texel across everything.' He goes on to discuss other topics like the hardware necessary to efficiently process his new data structure, translation to consoles, multi-GPU PC gaming and even the world of hardware physics."
Sid Meier's first game came out eight years before Commander Keen, somehow I doubt this John was his influence. Some goes for Will Wright(6 years). Gabe Newell may have very well been influenced by John. Now if John Carmack is as legendary as /. is making him out to be, why isn't it John Carmack's Quake/Doom?
What you really mean to say is that your original comment was meant to be dismissive, probably due to your hating the fact that someone other than you is considered a primary expert on a subject. Your second comment is you realizing you were called out, appropriately, and need to reply in some way that will backup that you were being dismissive originally (although you claim you weren't). You realized that to do so you had to at least provide some cut and paste arguments to reinforce your dismissive attitude. Of course you don't come right out and say whether John's approach is better or not, you just try to "imply" it's not without really taking a stance.