Unlimited detail tech

[Rainbow Dash]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00gAbgBu8R4

[n00b1n8R]

God damn why is everyone spamming this shit. They've been pedaling it for ages and there's a reason it hasn't gone anywhere.
Lets see it animate.
Lets talk about memory.
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8386977075/its-a-scam

[Rainbow Dash]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF8A4bsfKH8

Also no one but minecraft shitties care what Notch has to say, so uhhh~~

[Cortexian]

Except Notch is right in the math he did. Storage requirements for unlimited detail tech are still stupidly high, basically only people like me with 10TB+ storage space on one system can use unlimited detail. So sorry NVOUS.

[Rainbow Dash]

We'll see whether it's real or not eventually, but the word of someone whose obviously not privy to the project and has no idea how they might have overcome certain limitations is hardly reason enough to disregard it.

So sorry Freelancer.

[Cortexian]

Texturing data on something like that lone would be way more storage intensive than the current standard... No way around that really.

It's a long ways off anyway, we won't see any consumer grade stuff with unlimited detail for quite awhile since it's not needed yet.

[=sw=warlord]

If these guys were an actual development company I would hope they were professional enough to actually keep their own website up and going. (http://www.euclideon.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi)
But I digress, maybe they are the angels of graphics and don't need a damn website
Right Sel? :allears:

[Rainbow Dash]

If your crysis mod is any indication, everyone on this planet except you is the god, jesus, mohammed and buddha of graphics.

[CN3089]

polygon supremacy voxels get out

[neuro]

pwned.

ANYWAY
all speculation and whatnot aside, texturing data needs to be NO more expensive than it is right now. (though i imagine large texturemaps being used)

EXAMPLE you could just make a lowpoly projection-mesh and use it's UV's to project the texture data onto your point-cloud model.


the only thing i imagine being a large obstacle, is how you'll deal with stuff like fancy shaders. since it's all voxel based, you can't exactly pan UV's around or something.
(unless you were able to use aforementioned projection in real-time, but that seems expensive)

also, water + memory footprint of pointclouds

my opinion is just let's wait and see what comes of this.
they never said they have no limitations at all, just that they can show 'limitless' detail, which they more or less did.
it's interesting to say the least, and may have alot of potential.

[=sw=warlord]

If your crysis mod is any indication, everyone on this planet except you is the god, jesus, mohammed and buddha of graphics.
If your attitude is anything to go by, no one is allowed to have an opinion differing from yours.
:gtfo:

[Rainbow Dash]

Please stop posting, every time you do we lose an opportunity for there to be a post in your space that actually contributes to the discussion.

http://kotaku.com/5827192/euclideon-creator-swears-infinite-detail-is-not-a-hoax

Some of the shit in here is sounding dreadfully similar to what scientists with some discovery radically different to current belief get. You don't seem to understand that there are things out there no one has ever considered, and that you may not be capable of understanding.

[Limited]

If these guys were an actual development company I would hope they were professional enough to actually keep their own website up and going. (http://www.euclideon.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi)
But I digress, maybe they are the angels of graphics and don't need a damn website
Right Sel? :allears:
If you were an actual decent poster you would be professional enough to realise their website ran out of bandwidth due to the huge number of requests occurring since the video release. How about linking to the ACTUAL website URL? http://www.euclideon.com/
(http://www.euclideon.com/)
Why are you guys talking about texturing uv's...you cannot texture an atom :fail:..you simple give it a colour (and a specular amount/normal etc).

I (http://www.euclideon.com/) dont think the video is fake or a scam, I believe they have just over used some buzz-words to get people interested, its possible tech will move in that direction but we wont have "unlimited detail" games as soon as their tech is released.

2 mil? Damn...Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

Also his snow white analogy is just BSP tree structure >_> (or very similar).

All I'm going to do is 'watch this space', could have potential.

[Donut]

Some of the shit in here is sounding dreadfully similar to what scientists with some discovery radically different to current belief get. You don't seem to understand that there are things out there no one has ever considered, and that you may not be capable of understanding.
im inclined to agree with you about the last part, until you stop and think realistically about technical limitations. yeah, the technology can be in development now to be used much later in the future, and of course hardware, software and training is going to be resistant to change, so this technology wont be used for a long time; but if thats the case, why shoot off about it now?

i have a hard time believing everything they say in that video, especially since they just talk about how revolutionary it is as opposed to HOW it actually works. but at the same time, no sane company would ever divulge technical details, especially this early in the game. i guess we're going to have to wait and see.

[Rainbow Dash]

im inclined to agree with you about the last part, until you stop and think realistically about technical limitations. yeah, the technology can be in development now to be used much later in the future, and of course hardware, software and training is going to be resistant to change, so this technology wont be used for a long time; but if thats the case, why shoot off about it now?


The point I was trying to make was more, that if they've done this on current hardware, it's probably so radically different from the 3d rendering ruleset most of us here have come to understand. It's not necessarily that it requires more processing power than what most consumer pcs can currently offer, it's that it's processed so differently than what we're used to, it may actually require way less power than we think.

Not sure if that makes sense.

[Limited]

It uses software (not hardware acceleration) to render...

[Rainbow Dash]

Yes...?

Data is still processed in software rendering Limited.

[Donut]

The point I was trying to make was more, that if they've done this on current hardware, it's probably so radically different from the 3d rendering ruleset most of us here have come to understand. It's not necessarily that it requires more processing power than what most consumer pcs can currently offer, it's that it's processed so differently than what we're used to, it may actually require way less power than we think.

Not sure if that makes sense.
i get what youre saying, and it does make sense. theres a good chance that textures in their entirety wouldnt even be necessary with this system, for example, which would free up quite a bit of processing power to do something else. what im saying is that even with the best algorithms for searching, you still need to store that point data, which, as freelancer said, is going to take up massive amounts of hard drive space. then you need to sift through that data too. it makes sense, but space limitations alone make this technology basically impossible to use for games, unless the "unlimited" detail level is taken WAY down.

[Limited]

Yes...?

Data is still processed in software rendering Limited.
I was implying it does not need powerful hardware, hence the word hardware acceleration.

[Rainbow Dash]

I was implying it does not need powerful hardware, hence the word hardware acceleration.

I'm not sure but I think we're saying the same thing.

[Limited]

I'm not sure but I think we're saying the same thing.
Ah okay, well judging by what the guy said having a more powerful graphics card won't help speed it up.

[Higuy]

Cool.

[nuttyyayap]

I was gonna post this :saddowns:
Oh well, I still don't see how the living fuck anybody'll use this in a game. EVER.
I mean, you'd need like a yottabyte of ram to run a game on the scale of reach with this, so say nothing of other factors...

[Zeph]

God damn why is everyone spamming this shit. They've been pedaling it for ages and there's a reason it hasn't gone anywhere.
Lets see it animate.
Lets talk about memory.
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8386977075/its-a-scam

The first video they released last year showed one of their creatures animated in a really horrible 'walk cycle'. As they said, they're not artists, so they just have the capability to do it the way they think it could be done. With their grants, they've started to acquire artists to tailor the technology to the industry they want it going to. This past year, they've gone from rendering a few objects instanced several thousands of times to dozens of objects rendered across a square kilometer.

They were doing it without joints and bones, though, but that means they at least have a system in place that can handle the live adjustment of bulk point data. I think they're going to be in a world of hurt when they try to do it in the quantity matching existing games, but they don't seem to be discouraged.


Except Notch is right in the math he did. Storage requirements for unlimited detail tech are still stupidly high, basically only people like me with 10TB+ storage space on one system can use unlimited detail. So sorry NVOUS.
The math is correct, but he's still a dumbass. He just assumed that every level will contain 8 thousandths of a cubic kilometer of unique detail. If anything, it has only 8 cubic meters of unique detail. They're currently working on 64 points per cubic milimeter for solid objects. Unless you have a highly complex physics engine that will treat each point as a volume of material for physics simulation, you only need a specific amount of detail to create surface area. Either way, physics in games now is more about accurate collision modeling than simulation.


If these guys were an actual development company I would hope they were professional enough to actually keep their own website up and going. (http://www.euclideon.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi)
But I digress, maybe they are the angels of graphics and don't need a damn website
Right Sel? :allears:
nVidia is just as unprofessional in that case. Starcraft 2 people broke their website for their open tournament due to excess traffic. Contrary to popular belief, not every company has an unmetered fiber tap and top tier servers. The unlimited internet actually has a few limits. This is just a case of a flood that the [probably] local host couldn't handle. They're not quite a business enterprise yet.


polygon supremacy voxels get out
For now. I dont see the point in using a polygon program to convert modeling over to point cloud as you lose pretty much all the benefit of the detail on the planar surface. Even if you use a normal map for more detail, you're still limited by texel density.


pwned.

ANYWAY
all speculation and whatnot aside, texturing data needs to be NO more expensive than it is right now. (though i imagine large texturemaps being used)

EXAMPLE you could just make a lowpoly projection-mesh and use it's UV's to project the texture data onto your point-cloud model.


the only thing i imagine being a large obstacle, is how you'll deal with stuff like fancy shaders. since it's all voxel based, you can't exactly pan UV's around or something.
(unless you were able to use aforementioned projection in real-time, but that seems expensive)

also, water + memory footprint of pointclouds

my opinion is just let's wait and see what comes of this.
they never said they have no limitations at all, just that they can show 'limitless' detail, which they more or less did.
it's interesting to say the least, and may have alot of potential.

The texturing data could be huge or it could be more optimized. That's one of the things they're working on. If they go more along a vector path of coloring, they could use pallets and that could greatly reduce memory space. Either way, they have color data in it running on target right now. Supposedly they've gotten monochrome lighting running now as well. As you say, it's going to be interesting to see just how powerful they can make this as it continues to be worked on. We're still only looking at it as outside eyes :\


If your attitude is anything to go by, no one is allowed to have an opinion differing from yours.
:gtfo:
Yeah, you can't even convince him carriers are good because he just attack moves them to their death then asks a couple minutes later where his carriers went.


Yes...?

Data is still processed in software rendering Limited.

Ah okay, well judging by what the guy said having a more powerful graphics card won't help speed it up.

It's running single threaded now, somehow. It's still just a prototype where they're figuring out how it can be done. By the time they get there, I'm sure they'll look to offload it to a dedicated hardware renderer. One of their initial cripes was that the GPU industry was trying to put them out of business because when their tech is done, the hardware war is over since you wouldn't ever need a stronger GPU. Besides, not like the DX11 API is useful for this or anything.


I've said it on other boards, but these guys are nothing more than a tech firm right now who are your stereotypical just out of college business majors who believed everything they learned in school. It's somewhat frightening how close his speeches sound like some business major friends practicing for a presentation. They love numbers and they love key words because that's exactly how better they are than the competition and that's why you should give your money to them because they know more about anything than you do. Over time, they'll merge their way into the entertainment industry and that's when their terminology and outlook will change. It's kinda unfortunate they're picking up flak because they don't really realize that they're speaking to a well educated industry with decades of knowledge accumulated on the subject.

[Guardian]

http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3094648 I havent read this fully yet, but it may help.

[cheezdue]

Would'nt this be more helpful in level design? I'm no expert but it does sound amazing to have "unlimited detail", it's not like a computer has the ability to calculate an infinite of data./sarcasmEither way it still looks amazing on the amount of detail it can create.

[Zeph]

http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3094648 I havent read this fully yet, but it may help.

If they're not storing xyz world position data per point, I'm wondering just how much of a pallet-like system they're using. I assumed colors were going to be like that, but geometry as well? That would explain how they're able to filter as well as they do. Detail would be formed like a tree instead of reading everything and choosing what should be shown. Instead, the rasterizer would determine a chunk-tree is visible, and pull detail information down enough levels to fill whatever pixels in the screen real estate need to be shown. Would be very quick and very efficient.

Now that they've taken the time to actually [explain] how the damned thing works, it looks pretty amazing. Shows why people like notch with the assumption that every atom/block has to be treated like a special snowflake can't help but think it's an impossible feat.

[Guardian]

Small Bump to give you guys this. Havent watched it all yet.

http://www.ausgamers.com/news/read/3097959

[n00b1n8R]

welp.

[Patrickssj6]

Notch is an idiot...he should fix his own engine first. The fact that he is talking about storing every point in memory is just stupid.

Lets say if you have 2 points and the information about a curve, you can technically draw unlimited points in between by just storing 3 informations.

The video is too much blabla though.

[Limited]

Wow, that video was damn awesome. Loved the tech demo, I like the main guys attitude too, he didnt slip in a line and not answer it, he didnt tease - he said he couldnt talk about stuff which is understandable. I feel he really covered all his bases.

I hope Notch retracts his statement and/or posts says he is wrong. My opinion on Notch has greatly dropped from his views on this tech.

[Kornman00]

Unlimited Detail Engine Creator Champions Voxels, Dispels Criticism (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/38727/Unlimited_Detail_Engine_Creator_Champions_Voxels_D ispels_Criticism.php)

Man, the comments posted...you could fuel a Darth Vader clone with all their anger lol

[Limited]

Um, why was the new story posted on Gamasutra? Absolutely no new details.

[n00b1n8R]

Is there anything new in the article or is this website just 6 months late to the after-party?

[Limited]

Is there anything new in the article or is this website just 6 months late to the after-party?
^ Late, Gamasutra is usually good for news, no idea why they posted it.

[Kornman00]

Next time read the entire article and observe their links (http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2011/11/22/exploring-unlimited-detail.aspx?PostPageIndex=1).

[Limited]

Next time read the entire article and observe their links (http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2011/11/22/exploring-unlimited-detail.aspx?PostPageIndex=1).Pfft, but Unlimited detail tech is all about the gorgeous visuals and the stunning technology! Words cannot be used to contain the beauty!

A picture is worth a thousand words, most videos are 24fps or above, thats 24 thousand words a second Kornman!!

[Kornman00]

Not many people seem to realize that the saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" doesn't account for inflation. Words today are like the US dollar :realsmug:

[TVTyrant]

IDGI. What does this have to do with Notch? Its awesome for sure, though!

[Donut]

notch wrote this whole article about why he thinks this is a scam and wont work in any practical situation, and his massive fan base of people read that off his blog and are now running around spewing it like its fact.

[TVTyrant]

notch wrote this whole article about why he thinks this is a scam and wont work in any practical situation, and his massive fan base of people read that off his blog and are now running around spewing it like its fact.
Thanks Donut. I can always rely on you for the TL;DR version.

[Cortexian]

Bow down before our overlord, Notch! Creator of games using Java!

[Patrickssj6]

I already outlined why Notch's theory is wrong.

[TeeKup]

You mean besides the fact he's using Java?

[Warsaw]

You mean besides the fact he's using Java?

Game. Set. Match.

[Sanctus]

I'm still skeptical about they whole thing until I see some animations.

[Zeph]

I'm still skeptical about they whole thing until I see some animations.
One of their videos had animations. Since they're doing their cloud point positioning relatively, the process works no different than traditional rigging. Further detail gets filled in based on how far through the tree the renderer goes.

[Limited]

notch wrote this whole article about why he thinks this is a scam and wont work in any practical situation, and his massive fan base of people read that off his blog and are now running around spewing it like its fact.Notch basically got owned by the guy who proved how he was wrong.

Notch's credibility has dramatically dropped, especially after his ranting post-Minecon.

[n00b1n8R]

Notch has zero credibility after he released a hugely unfinished game.

[Kornman00]

...and made millions from it

[=sw=warlord]

...and made millions from it
That just shows he knows how to market shit in a tube and sell it as lipstick, doesn't mean he understands the engineering behind "Unlimited Detail Tech".

[dark navi]

Can someone please tl;dr the counter argument to Notch's?

[PopeAK49]

Very cool stuff. Looks complicating in a way.

[=sw=warlord]

Can someone please tl;dr the counter argument to Notch's?
Notch is assuming you need all the data in memory at any one time.
the other thing he assumed is that all the data would be unique but with this kind of thing you don't use unique objects to fill a world you duplicate it like with polygon worlds.

TL:DR Notch thinks everything is generated all at once when this system scales its worlds to the number of pixels not the amount of space the world exists in, IE: scaling a post card to the size of a post stamp.

[Kornman00]

That just shows he knows how to market shit in a tube and sell it as lipstick, doesn't mean he understands the engineering behind "Unlimited Detail Tech".
Which is what I was trying to highlight.

He's the game industry's version of a one-hit-wonder :mech2:

[Patrickssj6]

Would be awesome if those guys would make an unlimited detail version of Minecraft :mech2:

[=sw=warlord]

Which is what I was trying to highlight.

He's the game industry's version of a one-hit-wonder
You mean he's a one trick pony who will bash people using methods not to his appeal.

[Donut]

you know, i just thought of something... i think current physics engines would be obsolete.
AFAIK, current physics engines are kind of very dependent on triangles and vertex point data for math. i mention this because somebody brought up making an elder scrolls game with this, and the first thing that came to mind is "strong arming" your way up the side of a steep mountain by finding those polygons that are just barely at a low enough angle for you to walk up. i would assume the engine driving this uses a lot of trigonometry, which is really nothing without angles. with unlimited detail, you kind of lose the concept of an angle (since its a point cloud and not triangles mapped from vertices), and everything becomes a curve, more or less. it seems like you would still need the polygon structure for collision, or at least some form of a straight line "cage" to work with. otherwise youd be dealing with hundreds of these points touching one character's foot, and then how do you know what angle hes trying to walk up?

this is just me working backwards from my math background and from what ive experienced during gameplay. i may be entirely wrong.

[Patrickssj6]

I don't see any problems calculation the steepness...tbh it's the same principle with polygons since you are working with vertices as well.

[RedBaron]

I'm not sure how it's done with polygons, but you could simply select 3 points in 3D space (3 atoms) separated equidistant from each other. This distance would probably be assigned according to a value of allowed error (the closer the points are clustered, the more accurate the calculation). Then based on the 3 points, the plane that they lie on could be easily calculated, and then the gradient of said plane could be acquired to find your slopes in 3 components. Not sure how efficient this would be for an engine though, since the calculations would constantly be updated real-time as the physics is determined along different points of a non-uniform 3D surface.

[Warsaw]

Sounds like you'd need to take the movement vector(s) of points on the player and use them as tangent lines out to a set distance (say, length of each boot) to the curved surfaces that the player is trying to move across.

So, in a word, calculus.

[Donut]

^ i was thinking calculus too, but youre missing a key element: the curve itself. you can find the angle using the slope of the line tangent to the curve at a player's point of contact (whatever you decide that will be, center of balance or whatever), but from my admittedly limited experience with calculus, you need a function of a curve to find the actual slope. the only thing i can think is you would have the computer analyze the points in the general vicinity and perform a regression method to find a "best fit" curve, then work off of that.
movement vectors of players dont quite work because the system doesnt know when to make them move anywhere but a straight line due to the original issue i suggested. you could probably simplify the situation and reduce calculations with a linear regression instead of some exponential one or something.

again, just running my mouth here.
E: and at that point, it would be far less resource expensive to have some sort of non-rendered auto-generated polygonal cage for collisions.

[Warsaw]

That is exactly what I was thinking, too. You could form all of the collision models in the world in that manner, even hit-boxes. It's just that points in a certain area of the object would have to have a marker saying "this is the head area" or "this is the foot" so that the engine can act accordingly. There would be a larger overhead, though. Time to put those integrated GPUs to work!

[Phopojijo]

I wouldn't be too concerned with Physics, but yeah the point is to do this technology he'd basically need to do everything from scratch.

Such as shaders o.O;

I still smell massive bullcrap on this project. The guy's public appearances are way too buzz-wordy and "these are the big mean men who don't want you to have unlimited detail"y to be entirely genuine. There will be problems. What? Not exactly sure yet. Lighting? Shader effects? Dunno.

I mean I guess it could just be that he is just plain broke and is feeling the crunch of competition (http://maverick.inria.fr/Membres/Cyril.Crassin/thesis/) or something... but yeah.

[neuro]

well, i'm guessing he could just have texture data 'baked' into the pointcloud on runtime or something.

[Phopojijo]

I'm not talking about that. Imagine trying to do frame-buffer distortion based on that geometry? Geometry distortion for things like waves?

Unlike his videos claim, there's a LOT MORE to making a beautiful video game than just the polycount.

[=sw=warlord]

I'm not talking about that. Imagine trying to do frame-buffer distortion based on that geometry? Geometry distortion for things like waves?

Unlike his videos claim, there's a LOT MORE to making a beautiful video game than just the polycount.
Rome wasn't built in a day, Considering how much progress has been made already, it's a lot better than how realtime Polygon based games started out like.

[Phopojijo]

No but the thing is -- some things are prohibitively difficult to do in one method over another. What are we trading off to get the higher detail? Is there some algorithms that are simple to do in polygons that take supercomputers to do in point-cloud? I don't know, we don't know... that's the problem.

[RedBaron]

^ i was thinking calculus too, but youre missing a key element: the curve itself.

Basically why I suggested the whole business of selecting 3 points to form a triangle in 3D space. If you take the 3 vertices of the triangle and form two vectors sharing the same origin, you can take the cross product and do some algebra to acquire the plane that is tangent to the 3D object at the chosen origin. This plane is basically a "tangent line" or "slope" for surfaces in 3 dimension. The gradient of this plane could then easily be taken as the rate of change of the 3D object in the x,y,z components. The need for the actual equation of the surface (it's not a curve but a surface since it's in 3D) is avoided by constantly choosing a new triangle to calculate from. I imagine that this would be less stress on the CPU than executing interpolation for every different object.

Alright I'm done running my mouth now. It's just that I learned this stuff pretty recently and find that it's fascinating how it could have an application in this.

[Warsaw]

Math runs the world, bro.

[Guardian]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Irf-HJ4fBls#!

T (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Irf-HJ4fBls#!)hey're back. If they are legit then its looking interesting, especially if they manage to incorporate this sort of tech into games.

[neuro]

this stuff doesnt work in games.

it's fun enough to have it all static, but to be able to manipulate voxel volumes into animation is a whole different story.

won't happen, not until we have quantum computers in every household, considering the amount of memory needed for that shit

[Zeph]

Still not sure why people are in such disbelief throwing out numbers and shit like that. It's like saying minecraft can't run a 1:1 scale of the Earth because there's not enough RAM to store each chunk.

It's nice to see them pull in money through survey visualization. The video pretty much cover's Phopo's last post. The tradeoff is simply storage space, and that's ultimately decided on how precise you want shit to be. Games don't need multiple points per millimeter to run off with this. 3ds Max is single precision when it comes to vertex data anyways. That said, I'd like to see them taking some of the real world data that working with various surveyors has given them and begin working on physical simulations within that data set. With the CPU handling the world's positional data, that opens up the GPU to run physics against it.

edit:

this stuff doesnt work in games.

it's fun enough to have it all static, but to be able to manipulate voxel volumes into animation is a whole different story.

won't happen, not until we have quantum computers in every household, considering the amount of memory needed for that shit
voxels have been shown to work in game quite well.
not being able to manipulate voxel volumes? CryEngine has had live-editable voxels since at least version 2. Animation is simply a matter of displacement according to a set of linear equations. If it works on vertex data, why wouldn't it work against voxel tree elements considering that can still be modeled linearly?

Due to the way CE3's physics engine is optimized, I've had to code in a way to imitate certain physics interactions that's pretty much the same thing as forward kinematics in animation. The function only needs 10 variables: starting position, a point on the axis you want to rotate about, the normalized vector of that axis, and the angle you want to rotate. Any vertex being deformed in animation follows the same idea of this function per bone it's parented to. I don't see any reason why tree data would be done any differently.

And before anyone starts, don't even think you'd commit each update back to the hdd. This is translation matrix material.

[Bobblehob]

Is it odd that the video has ratings and comments disabled? I have to admit this looks interesting, but it still makes me very skeptical...

[Guardian]

I think that's due to the shit storms which ensued after their last video.

Also could it be possible for them to use this system for the environments in a game while having the dynamic components run like they do in the normal video games. That would save lots of power and poly counts that would normally be wasted on the environment.

[Kornman00]

Is it odd that the video has ratings and comments disabled? I have to admit this looks interesting, but it still makes me very skeptical...
Probably because they're a serious business and don't have time for fucking youtube trolls shitting up their video

[Bobblehob]

Probably because they're a serious business and don't have time for fucking youtube trolls shitting up their video

To a degree, but most businesses don't immediately cut them off, especially when the trolls and idiots spam, i.e. MSoft and their official videos (which are full of massive amounts of spam and shit).

[ThePlague]

To a degree, but most businesses don't immediately cut them off, especially when the trolls and idiots spam, i.e. MSoft and their official videos (which are full of massive amounts of spam and shit).I'm guessing MS doesn't even post their own shit, they probably have some PR company do it.

[=sw=warlord]

To a degree, but most businesses don't immediately cut them off, especially when the trolls and idiots spam, i.e. MSoft and their official videos (which are full of massive amounts of spam and shit).
Microsoft offloads a lot of their marketing and consumer support to 3rd parties.

[Phopojijo]

It's nice to see them pull in money through survey visualization. The video pretty much cover's Phopo's last post. The tradeoff is simply storage space, and that's ultimately decided on how precise you want shit to be. Games don't need multiple points per millimeter to run off with this. 3ds Max is single precision when it comes to vertex data anyways. That said, I'd like to see them taking some of the real world data that working with various surveyors has given them and begin working on physical simulations within that data set. With the CPU handling the world's positional data, that opens up the GPU to run physics against it.No it doesn't... there are still a lot of unknowns.

[Warsaw]

I think that's due to the shit storms which ensued after their last video.

Also could it be possible for them to use this system for the environments in a game while having the dynamic components run like they do in the normal video games. That would save lots of power and poly counts that would normally be wasted on the environment.

But wouldn't you want your environments to be dynamic, too? You want dynamic lights, plants, trees, etc. I'm not saying all of that is impossible with voxels, I really don't know. I do know that if I wanted static environments, I'd play any old game that used light-mapping.

[Guardian]

To be honest I don't know much about what I'm talking about. But surely not having to expend polys on indestructable buidlings, rocks, and the ground/hills could give it all a little extra. Though if this would all ruin such things as dynamic lighting, ill take my dynamic lighting.

[Warsaw]

I actually think lighting can be dynamic with voxels, the trick is going to be getting the transitions to be smooth and uniform rather than pin-pricking in a fashion similar to the radar time-progression on the Weather Channel's maps. That actually goes for pretty much anything. The 1997 PC adventure-game rendition of Blade Runner used voxels for everything outside of cut-scenes, including the animated characters. Due to limitations of the time, the detail was low and it suffered from the aforementioned visual quirk, but it did show that non-static visuals can be done. With voxels, all you are doing is piecing together panels of a picture and rotating them in 3D space to provide the illusion of a 3D object. Basically...it's fancy pixel art. There is absolutely nothing preventing you from having an animated and colour-changing version of a sprite, which is essentially what an animated, dynamically lit object rendered using voxels is.

[Phopojijo]

They're not voxels, they're point clouds. Also, one huge advantage of point clouds (and, co-incidentally voxels) is that they are easy to raytrace... much easier than triangles. (You just need to see which point your ray touches first... rather than whether your ray intersects with one of n surfaces...)

Still a lot of unknowns though.

[Kornman00]

Still a lot of unknowns though.
Yeah, like...your MOM

:jijophopo:

[Zeph]

They're not voxels, they're point clouds. Also, one huge advantage of point clouds (and, co-incidentally voxels) is that they are easy to raytrace... much easier than triangles. (You just need to see which point your ray touches first... rather than whether your ray intersects with one of n surfaces...)

Still a lot of unknowns though.

Hmm, but wouldn't their conversion process from raw point cloud data to their own format make them be considered voxels?

[Phopojijo]

Not from how I understand it. Voxels have volume... these apparently do not.

They just select the appropriate point for a pixel on screen which says "I claim this pixel in the name of OH CRAP MONITOR REFRESH ;-;"