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id Tech 7

id Tech 7 is a multiplatform proprietary game engine developed by id Software as the successor to id Tech 6.^[1] It debuted in the first-person shooter Doom Eternal, which was released on March 20, 2020, for platforms including Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia, and has since been used in other titles such as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024).^[2] The engine utilizes the Vulkan graphics API to enable efficient rendering and tool backend operations, supporting high frame rates up to 1000 FPS on sufficiently powerful PC hardware.^[3]^[4] Building on id Tech 6's foundations from Doom (2016), id Tech 7 introduces significant advancements in asset handling and performance optimization to maximize current-generation hardware while preparing for next-generation consoles and GPUs.^[1] Key improvements include a high-performance image streaming system that replaces the previous megatexture technology, allowing for much higher resolution textures without issues like pop-in or compression artifacts.^[3] The engine employs advanced culling techniques, such as triangle and occlusion culling, to manage scenes with 80 to 90 million triangles while rejecting invisible geometry to reduce GPU load.^[3] Additionally, a per-pixel level-of-detail (LOD) system and light culling based on depth ensure smooth transitions and dynamic lighting without performance penalties.^[3] id Tech 7 supports dynamic resolution scaling on consoles, achieving resolutions up to 1800p on Xbox One X and 1440p on PlayStation 4 Pro, while maintaining 60 FPS targets across platforms.^[3] It features a geometry decal system for flexible artistic decal placement directly on models and a revamped destruction system with multi-layer geometry for realistic dismemberment effects in gameplay.^[3] Temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) and upsampling techniques deliver clean image quality, and the engine integrates Alembic animation caching for complex, real-time animations like organic movements.^[3] According to id Software's lead engine programmer Billy Khan, these enhancements enable 10 times more unique assets with greater detail compared to id Tech 6, emphasizing parallel processing and hardware scalability.^[1]

Development and history

Origins and design goals

Development of id Tech 7 was initiated by id Software following the release of Doom (2016), which utilized the preceding id Tech 6 engine, with the primary aim of advancing support for fast-paced first-person shooter gameplay while incorporating enhanced visual capabilities tailored to emerging next-generation hardware.^[1] The engine's creation was driven by id Software's ongoing commitment to pushing technological boundaries in real-time rendering, building directly on lessons from id Tech 6 to enable more immersive and responsive demonic encounters in future titles like Doom Eternal.^[1] Key design goals centered on achieving approximately 10 times the geometric detail compared to id Tech 6, alongside significantly higher texture fidelity, to create denser, more intricate environments without compromising performance.^[5] These enhancements were planned to support deployment across current-generation platforms such as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, while incorporating scalable architecture to accommodate next-generation consoles like PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X without requiring extensive code overhauls.^[1] A core objective was the adoption of a job-based processing model to eradicate single-threaded bottlenecks, thereby facilitating advanced features such as fully destructible environments and real-time dynamic interactions with enemies, including dismemberment of demonic foes during combat.^[6]^[5] The engine's high-level objectives were first publicly demonstrated at QuakeCon 2018 alongside the reveal of Doom Eternal, showcasing real-time 60 Hz gameplay that highlighted these ambitions in action, including destructible demon anatomy and elevated visual complexity.^[5] This debut underscored id Software's focus on maintaining fluid, high-frame-rate experiences even amid the increased computational demands of the new design paradigms.^[5]

Timeline and milestones

Development of id Tech 7 began around 2017 following the release of Doom (2016), which utilized its predecessor id Tech 6, with the project led by id Software's lead engine programmer Billy Khan.^[1]^[7] The engine made its public debut at QuakeCon 2018, where id Software showcased the first gameplay demo of Doom Eternal powered by id Tech 7 during the keynote presentation.^[8] Doom Eternal launched on March 20, 2020, marking the first commercial release of id Tech 7, available initially on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia, with the Nintendo Switch version following on December 8, 2020.^[9] In June 2021, id Software released a next-generation update for Doom Eternal that introduced ray tracing support on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, alongside NVIDIA DLSS integration for PC to enhance performance and visual fidelity. By 2024, MachineGames adapted id Tech 7 for use in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which launched in December of that year.^[10] Following the 2021 update, no significant core enhancements were made to id Tech 7, as id Software shifted focus to its successor, id Tech 8, which was announced alongside Doom: The Dark Ages in June 2024 and released on May 15, 2025.^[11]

Technical architecture

Core programming and systems

id Tech 7 is written primarily in C++, enabling robust cross-platform compatibility across PC, consoles, and other devices. This choice leverages C++'s performance and portability features, allowing the engine to target diverse hardware architectures efficiently.^[12] The engine supports the Vulkan graphics API on PC, providing low-overhead access to GPU resources for efficient rendering. On Xbox platforms, it utilizes DirectX 12. This multi-API strategy minimizes platform-specific code and optimizes hardware utilization without compromising performance.^[3]^[13] At its core, id Tech 7 employs a job-based system architecture that eliminates the traditional main thread, instead dispatching tasks dynamically to worker threads matching the number of available CPU cores. This design promotes balanced load distribution and maximizes parallelism, allowing the engine to scale effectively with modern multi-core processors. As lead engine programmer Billy Khan noted, "We made a major improvement in id Tech 7 around the job system... Using this across the board everywhere allowed us to speed up everything." The approach integrates seamlessly with the engine's multithreading model, enabling concurrent execution of game logic, physics, and other systems.^[14] A key feature is the integrated "Destructible Demons" system, which enables procedural enemy dismemberment through physics simulations. This allows demons to dynamically reflect damage by progressively losing limbs and body parts, enhancing combat immersion with realistic gore and tactical battlefield manipulation. Built on unified skeletal rigs, the system facilitates quick artist iterations and supports varied dismemberment outcomes based on weapon impacts and hit locations.^[15]^[16] Through modular redesign, id Tech 7 achieves a reduced codebase, approximately 1 million fewer lines than id Tech 6, primarily by streamlining legacy components like the OpenGL renderer and consolidating redundant modules. This leaner structure improves maintainability and development speed while preserving advanced capabilities.^[1]

Multithreading model

id Tech 7 implements a fully job-based multithreading model, breaking down all engine tasks—such as AI, physics, and rendering—into independent jobs that are dynamically dispatched to available threads for execution. This design ensures efficient parallel processing across the CPU, maximizing utilization without relying on traditional sequential workflows.^[6] In contrast to older engines that serialize operations on a main thread, id Tech 7 eliminates such a thread entirely, assigning one worker thread per CPU core to handle the job queue. Lead engine programmer Billy Khan noted that this represented a major improvement, stating, "We made a major improvement in id Tech 7 around the job system. Using this across the board everywhere allowed us to speed up the game tremendously."^[14]^[6] This multithreading approach delivers key benefits for fast-paced first-person shooter gameplay in titles like Doom Eternal, enabling real-time simulation of intricate interactions, including glory kills and environmental destruction, while maintaining stable frame rates even under heavy computational load. By distributing workloads effectively, the system prevents performance bottlenecks during intense sequences, supporting seamless player experiences.^[14] The model's scalability further enhances its versatility, adapting dynamically to hardware variations by leveraging all available cores—from 8-core configurations on consoles like the PlayStation 5 to 16 or more cores on high-end PCs—ensuring consistent performance optimization across diverse platforms.^[17]

Graphics and rendering

Rendering pipeline

The rendering pipeline in id Tech 7 employs a fully forward rendering approach, which enables efficient handling of high draw call counts in expansive open arenas by minimizing memory bandwidth usage compared to deferred techniques used in prior engines.^[18] This design supports rendering scenes with 80 to 90 million triangles through CPU-driven culling and dynamic merging of draw calls via compute shaders that generate indirect index buffers, reducing CPU submission overhead and leveraging bindless resources for streamlined GPU access.^[16]^[18] On PC platforms, the pipeline is built exclusively around the Vulkan API to achieve lower CPU overhead and better multi-core utilization, eliminating the OpenGL support present in earlier id Tech versions.^[18] This Vulkan backend facilitates direct control over GPU resources, allowing for optimized command buffer submissions that contribute to frame rates exceeding 300 fps on high-end hardware.^[16] Dynamic resolution scaling is integrated into the pipeline to sustain target frame rates during demanding sequences, adjusting output resolution—such as dropping to around 720p on base consoles or 1080p on enhanced variants—while maintaining visual fidelity through temporal upsampling.^[16] Particle systems for effects like gore and explosions are processed via GPU compute shaders in parallel with geometry rendering, using a dedicated command buffer system for emission and culling to ensure seamless integration without bottlenecking the main draw passes.^[18] The rendering jobs benefit from the engine's multithreading model, distributing tasks across CPU cores for concurrent execution.^[18]

Lighting and visual effects

id Tech 7 supports high dynamic range (HDR) rendering.^[18] This implementation uses custom tone mapping.^[18] The result is a balanced exposure that maintains detail in both intensely lit demonic arenas and dimly shadowed corridors, enhancing the engine's atmospheric immersion in games like Doom Eternal.^[3] A significant advancement came in 2021 with the integration of hybrid ray tracing into id Tech 7, combining rasterization for primary rendering with ray-traced elements for enhanced realism on compatible hardware such as NVIDIA RTX GPUs, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X.^[19] This update, first deployed in Doom Eternal's patch, primarily introduces ray-traced reflections that capture accurate bounces on metallic surfaces and glossy materials, replacing screen-space approximations for more precise environmental interactions.^[20] Subsequent applications, such as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024), which uses id Tech 7, expand this to include ray-traced shadows and global illumination, where rays compute soft shadowing from complex geometry and diffuse lighting contributions, all while maintaining hybrid efficiency to support 60 FPS targets.^[21]^[22] These features are selectively enabled on hardware supporting hardware-accelerated ray tracing, ensuring broader accessibility without compromising core performance.^[23] To achieve atmospheric depth in hellish, otherworldly settings, id Tech 7 incorporates volumetric fog and god rays through a multi-pass volumetric lighting system.^[18] This technique uses a 3D lookup texture (LUT) with 32 depth slices to simulate light scattering in participating media, propagating scattering data across 160x90x64 view froxels in four rendering passes for efficient computation.^[18] In Doom Eternal, these effects manifest as dense, dynamic fog banks that interact with dynamic lights from explosions and weapons, while god rays pierce through hazy environments, adding volumetric shafts of light that enhance the infernal ambiance without excessive performance overhead.^[3] For performance-oriented global illumination, id Tech 7 utilizes screen-space reflections (SSR) and screen-space directional occlusion (SSDO) to approximate complex lighting interactions affordably. SSR is computed directly within the forward rendering shader via raymarching, adapting to surface roughness and falling back to static cubemaps for off-screen elements, which provides convincing reflections on wet floors and armor in fast-paced combat scenes.^[18] Complementing this, SSDO employs screen-space directional occlusion at half resolution, firing 16 randomized rays per pixel to darken crevices and simulate indirect shadowing, followed by a bilateral blur for noise reduction, thereby adding depth and contact shadows efficiently across varied geometries.^[18] These techniques integrate seamlessly into the engine's forward pipeline, delivering global illumination cues that bolster visual realism while prioritizing frame rate stability.^[24]

Performance and optimizations

Image streaming and texturing

id Tech 7 introduces a high-performance image streaming system that enables on-demand loading of high-resolution textures, thereby eliminating the pre-loading bottlenecks associated with previous approaches like megatextures. This allows for significantly higher texture fidelity without compromising loading times or performance, as assets are streamed directly from storage as needed during gameplay.^[16] The engine achieves a 10x increase in geometric detail compared to id Tech 6 through an efficient level-of-detail (LOD) system that manages models and environments dynamically. This system switches detail levels on a per-pixel basis according to screen-space occupancy, supporting scenes with 80 to 90 million triangles while minimizing visible pop-in and maintaining smooth frame rates.^[16]^[25] id Tech 7 employs a virtual texturing approach integrated with its streaming pipeline, which substantially reduces the overall memory footprint by only loading relevant texture portions into GPU memory. This enables denser scenes with more polygons and unique assets—up to 10 times the number compared to Doom (2016)—without exceeding hardware limits on consoles or PCs.^[16]^[26] Adaptive quality settings in id Tech 7 adjust texture mipmaps based on viewer distance and target hardware capabilities, ensuring optimal detail rendering across varying conditions. For instance, closer objects receive higher mipmap levels for sharpness, while distant ones use lower levels to conserve bandwidth and memory, contributing to scalable performance on platforms from base PS4 to high-end PCs.^[16]

Frame rate and scalability

id Tech 7 supports uncapped frame rates on PC, with a maximum limit of 1000 frames per second (FPS) achievable when vertical synchronization (VSync) is disabled, enabling high-refresh-rate displays to deliver exceptionally smooth gameplay on capable hardware.^[27] This design choice prioritizes performance fluidity for fast-paced action, though practical limits depend on system capabilities, often reaching 400 FPS or higher in optimized scenarios.^[27] On consoles, id Tech 7 implements a more conservative approach for stability, targeting a locked 60 FPS on last-generation hardware such as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, using dynamic resolution scaling to maintain performance during intense sequences by temporarily reducing internal resolution from up to 1800p on enhanced variants like PS4 Pro and Xbox One X.^[3] This scalability ensures consistent frame pacing across varying hardware demands without compromising core gameplay responsiveness.^[16] For next-generation consoles like PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, the engine scales to support 120 FPS modes at dynamic resolutions around 1584p-1800p in performance-focused configurations, while quality modes deliver 4K at 60 FPS, including ray tracing effects enabled via a 2021 update.^[28] These options allow players to balance visual fidelity and speed, with the engine's multithreading model contributing to stable frame delivery even under elevated loads.^[29] The engine's optimizations have also been demonstrated in later titles, such as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024), achieving 60 FPS at approximately 1800p dynamic resolution with ray-traced global illumination on Xbox Series X.^[30] Post-2021, id Tech 7 integrated NVIDIA DLSS for AI-driven upscaling on compatible RTX hardware, boosting performance by rendering at lower internal resolutions before reconstructing sharper images, particularly beneficial in ray-traced scenarios to sustain higher frame rates without significant quality loss.^[19] This addition enhances cross-platform adaptability, allowing the engine to leverage modern GPU features for improved scalability on PC while maintaining its core efficiency on consoles.^[31]

Applications and variants

Primary games

Doom Eternal, released in 2020, serves as the flagship title powered by id Tech 7, leveraging the engine to deliver intense arena-based combat where players face waves of demons in expansive, interconnected environments. The engine's advanced geometry handling enables destructible demons, a system that allows enemy bodies to break apart realistically upon impact from weapons or glory kills, enhancing the visceral feedback of combat without compromising frame rates. This is complemented by seamless level streaming, which maintains non-stop action by dynamically loading larger, more complex hellscapes and UAC facilities as the player progresses, minimizing traditional loading screens and supporting fluid traversal across vertical, multi-layered arenas. On PC, id Tech 7 supports the Vulkan API for efficient rendering and integrates NVIDIA's DLSS for upscaling, allowing high-fidelity visuals at elevated resolutions while targeting 60 FPS or higher. Console versions, particularly on next-generation hardware like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, achieve up to 120 FPS in performance modes, with the engine's optimizations enabling real-time physics simulations during glory kills—such as dismembered limbs reacting dynamically to the environment—without hitching during chaotic encounters.^[19]^[32] Central to id Tech 7's performance in Doom Eternal is its job-based multithreading system, which distributes tasks across CPU cores without a traditional main thread, enabling the engine to handle numerous enemies on screen simultaneously in large-scale battles while sustaining 60 FPS on current-generation hardware. Later updates introduced ray tracing support, further enhancing reflections and shadows in select scenes for compatible platforms.^[3]

Forks and adaptations

The "Motor" engine represents the primary fork of id Tech 7, developed collaboratively by id Software and MachineGames for the 2024 title Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (released December 9, 2024). This adaptation customizes the base engine for a first-person adventure genre, emphasizing exploration and puzzle-solving over fast-paced combat.^[33]^[30] Key modifications include enhanced AI pathing systems to support stealth mechanics and dynamic NPC behaviors within expansive environments, enabling larger open areas comparable to those in Hitman levels— a significant expansion from the more linear designs of prior id Tech 7 applications.^[30] The fork builds on the inherited multithreading model by extending the core job system to handle complex NPC interactions more efficiently, allowing for smoother performance during narrative sequences.^[30] Additionally, adaptations facilitate narrative-driven pacing through real-time rendered cutscenes featuring high-fidelity character models and animations, maintaining seamless transitions without pre-rendered assets.^[30] As of November 2025, no other major forks of id Tech 7 have been publicly documented or released; subsequent id Software titles, such as Doom: The Dark Ages (May 15, 2025), utilize the successor id Tech 8. The engine remains proprietary to id Software, with licensing restricted to internal use within Bethesda Game Studios and its subsidiaries.^[33]

References

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