Carmack on seeing mirror balls and remembering OpenGL sphere maps and light probes
ID_AA_Carmack · x · 2026-10-07
John Carmack recalls that decorative mirror balls remind him of OpenGL's old GLSPHEREMAP texgen option and light probes for realistic image-based lighting.
- Before cube maps, sphere maps enabled shiny surface rendering, but only from a limited viewpoint — you couldn't walk around a shiny object.
- For light probes, multiple exposures could be composited into a true many-orders-of-magnitude HDR image, covering everything from direct sunlight to subtle shadowed indirect lighting.
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