Hovertank 3D

Hovertank 3D is a computer game from id Software published by Softdisk that sometimes is claimed to be the first first-person shooter or even the first 3D game for DOS. The game used the same combination of scaled sprites and drawn walls that would later show up in Catacomb 3D and Wolfenstein 3D, but the walls in Hovertank 3D was in solid colour, without any textures.

The unprecedented significance of the graphics engine in Hovertank was a breakthrough in that it was the first program to only render what the player could see in his field of vision rather than everything around him. Instead of wasting processor power on unesessary rendering, the computer could instead draw much higher resolution and detailed graphics, immersing the player into the game even futher.

The credits are John Carmack and John Romero (programming), Tom Hall (game design) and Adrian Carmack (artwork).

External Link

• id's look back at Hovertank 3D: http://www.idsoftware.com/games/vintage/hovertank/