John Carmack

What does /prog/ think about John Carmack and graphics programming in general?

Back when the original Doom was made they were pushing a technology that could hardly support it. What were top of the line specs back then? 20mhz CPU? 8mb of ram? All 3D rendering done in software. Carmack had people like John Romero to help out on game play and Michael Abrash to max out assembly optimization. They didnt really need to hire artists back then, the bit resolution was so low you could count on your hand the number of pixels that would fit on a polygon. A character might be made of 20 polys max? So yes, it was (I imagine) an incredible game for its time, but by the time Doom 3 came out, they were very much outclassed by games already out of that genre. As much as everyone respects Carmack, his day is over as being a leader in 3D software innovation.