If the success of the Oculus Rift tells us anything, it's that VR is the way of the future. If it tells is one more thing however, it's that a John Carmack endorsement goes a long way. AMD will be feeling that glow of support today too, as Carmack recently tweeted out how the company's new Mantle API development could be "very helpful," to developers and potentially shake things up in the console scene.
AMD's Mantle system is designed to offer developers an alternative to both DirectX and OpenGL, providing direct access to the GPU's innards and thereby making it theoretically possible for developers to draw several times the power for certain instructions, from the same hardware. This needs to be tried in practice of course, but if Carmack says it's possible, I'm willing to believe it.
However, he did add the caveat that he wouldn't be jumping on the new API any time soon. Ultimately, OpenGL offers very similar performance improvements over DirectX, he says, making it seem a little unnecessary to get aboard the Mantle train just yet.
However, we've heard from EA that its new Frostbite Engine is designed to support Mantle, which means a lot of next-gen games are going to come with that API as an option. It will be really interesting to see what those games perform like on the PC and whether those people with AMD cards end up with a much more aesthetically pleasing gaming experience, than their Nvidia cousins.
What do you guys think about Mantle? Hype or potential game changer?
