When John Carmack speaks, gamers tend to listen, even if talk of ray-tracing and wire-thin optimization processes flies right over most of their heads. During his keynote at this year's QuakeCon festivities, the software engineering guru prevented attendees from daydreaming of returning to the BYOC area's 24-hour fragging by dropping one particularly juicy tidbit of information: id Tech 5, the engine powering id's upcoming Rage FPS, is just about done.

Carmack spoke about his role at id, explaining that he pops into Doom and Wolfenstein meetings to ensure that everything is going well before returning to his desk and focusing on the project that consumes the majority of his time: Rage.

The development of id Tech 5 began three years ago and is proceeding smoothly -- so smoothly that Carmack feels he won't be discussing its development at QuakeCon 2010, but rather its application toward Doom, the project that will make full use of id Tech 5 after Rage puts it through its paces.

Relevant Files:

Download the HD QuakeCon 2008 Wolfenstein teaser trailer