ioquake3 is a game engine project which aims to build upon id Software's Quake 3 source code release. The project was started shortly after the source code release with the goal of creating a bug-free, enhanced open source Quake 3 source code distribution upon which new games and projects can be based. In addition, the project aims to provide an improved environment in which Quake III: Arena, the Team Arena expansion pack and all the popular mods can be played. Notable features added by the project include builtin VoIP support, Anaglyph stereo rendering (for viewing with 3D glasses), and numerous security fixes. A full list of features is available on the project's website.
ioquake3 has been the basis of several game projects based on the id Tech 3 engine, such as OpenArena, Tremulous, Smokin' Guns, Urban Terror and World of Padman, as well as game engine projects such as efport (a Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force Holomatch engine recreation project) and OpenMoHAA. The engine and its associated games have been included in several Linux and BSD distributions.
The ioquake3 project has also been used in the academic arena as the basis for a variety of research in institutions such as Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Notre Dame as the foundation for VR research, and Swinburne University of Technology's Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures. There are even collaborative efforts from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Toronto that use ioquake3 as a platform for their published researches. Students have used ioquake3 as the basis for advanced graphics work for their theses, as well, such as Stephan Reiter's work which has even been noted at the LLVM project due to his synthesis of the ioquake3 engine, ray-tracing rendering technique, and LLVM.
Though the name ioquake3 is based on Ryan "Icculus" Gordon's site icculus.org, Ryan does not lead the project. Instead, he maintains a mentor role and provides hosting for the mailing lists and the SVN repository used by the project.
The source code for Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory was released under the GNU General Public License on August 12, 2010. The ioquake3 developers announced the start of respective engine projects soon after.
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