SMRTR TechOct 30, 2025Scientific American

How an Error in Cult Classic Game Doom Sparked New Appreciation for Pi

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Game developer John Carmack mistakenly programmed pi as 3.141592657 instead of 3.141592654 in the classic 1990s game Doom, with the error having minimal impact on gameplay. Engineer Luke Gotszling later exploited this mistake by deliberately changing pi values in Doom's open-source code, creating bizarre visual distortions that demonstrated how mathematical constants affect computer graphics.

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