Ioquake3 Is Finally Moving To Its New OpenGL Renderer By Default

The ioquake3 open-source game engine project that's built around the Quake III: Arena code-base is finally moving to its new renderer by default and abandoning the original 17-year-old renderer.

Beginning next month they will be defaulting new ioquake3 installs to using their "OpenGL 2" renderer and in November will disable the original renderer for all ioquake3 installations.

The "OpenGL 2" renderer is the project's newer renderer, but fear not, it actually makes use of OpenGL 3. This newer renderer started out in 2010 with OpenGL 2 support and since then has made use of OpenGL 3.

More details on this renderer transition can be found via ioquake3.org.

Too bad this new renderer still doesn't compete with what's found in modern game engines. Additionally, it's rather sad that ioquake3 remains more active and prosperous than the idTech4/ioDoom3 code-base. In fact, the official ioDoom3 repository hasn't been touched in more than one year. There is at least the more active RBDOOM-3-BFG fork that has seen commits as of last month.