Michael Abrash

Michael Abrash is an American programmer and technical writer. He is best known for his magazine articles and books on code optimization and graphics for IBM PC compatibles and for working at id Software in the mid-1990s on the rendering technology for ''Quake''. Since 2014, he has been the chief scientist of Oculus VR, a subsidiary of Meta Platforms.

Abrash started his career in 1982 writing action video games for the IBM PC, which eventually resulted in the 1990 book ''Zen of Assembly Language Volume 1: Knowledge''. He began writing about programming the EGA and VGA hardware of IBM PC compatibles for ''Programmer's Journal'' in the late 1980s, followed by a column for ''Dr. Dobb's Journal'' in the early 1990s. In the latter, he introduced a way to adjust VGA mode 13h to have a resolution of 320×240 with square pixels, which he called Mode X. He worked on the 3D rendering for ''Quake'' at id Software which he wrote publicly about. His columns and other writings were compiled into several books on graphics programming. He later wrote the Pixomatic software renderer for RAD Game Tools. Provided by Wikipedia