Looks interesting but I'll believe it when I see it in a real game.
It's not the environment, but how you can interact with it. What good is a realistic environment you cannot use? Can you bury beneath the dirt, anywhere on the map where the dirt is deep enough? Can you hide in the grass, and not stick out like a sore thumb?
Those are what make a game interesting. Pretty is one thing, interesting is another.
I would like to see a FPS with this technology.
I forgot to repost about this after doing some research while at work..
It's smoke and mirrors.
Notch, creator of Minecraft, explained it best.
reddit!
The funny thing is that John Carmack was sort of hyping this but it would take several years before it could begin to be implemented. Thats why I was conflicted about this. As far as FPS tech, I'd rather trust Carmack than Notch when it comes to this advanced tech, but the more I thought about it, Notch made more sense.
Unless Carmack knows more than he is letting on about this tech, I think its wishful thinking to believe this could be done in the next few years....@ID_AA_Carmack
John Carmack
Re Euclideon, no chance of a game on current gen systems, but maybe several years from now. Production issues will be challenging.
This does seem a bit like spin. The numbers seem unreal, but then of course, in graphics, things are repeated over and over.
Be nice if it is a reality, and not hype.
wtf is going to invest 3 tb drives just for one game? gtfo
That's not what would happen.
The calculation of ballpark 100,000 times better could simply be scaling the resolution down 46 times better, in 3 dimensions.
Again, most things are repeated over and over in designs.
I don't know how they would accomplish what they say, but I am not ready to dismiss it, then look like a fool if it's real.
i remember back in the 90s, had a friend who was doing graphics design/rendering on a comp...486 or the early pentiums....he had his comp on for dunno how many days..lol rendering a single photo...man
Unlimited Detail Interview
http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/118/1187338p1.html
The Unlimited Detail technology preview on YouTube set the gaming world alight, soaring straight to the top of the YouTube charts in mere days. This tech demo displayed an intriguing new technology that can supposedly offer infinite graphical detail in our games, where the use of blocky polygons (the flat triangles used in today's games) will be tossed aside, replaced instead by "atoms". It wasn't long before industry heavyweights like John Carmack and Minecraft's Notch weighed in, calling into question the video's claims. We sat down for a chat with Bruce Dell, CEO of Euclideon, the company behind Unlimited Detail, to discuss the reaction to the video. We highly recommend you watch the video before reading the interview!
__________________________________________________ ____________
GameSpy: Your tech appears to be based on the existing techniques known as point cloud and/or voxel based systems, and these require massive amounts of memory. Your demos seem to illustrate this limitation by using huge amounts of repe ion. You claim to have gotten around this issue, so when will you show a demonstration that isn't comprised of a handful of objects repeated over and over?
Bruce Dell: Several weeks ago, we decided that we needed a demo. Our aim was to show the technology, not necessarily beautiful graphics. I think we succeeded in our task. It's not a limitation of the technology, it simply came down to not having enough time to make more objects. We only have one artist and the poor guy has been slaving away to the point that even Cinderella would have pity on him. Please don't accuse him of too much laziness. As said before we are a technology company not a games company, that is all the art that could be included in the demo in such a short amount of time.
Regarding the memory, If we were making our world out of little tiny atoms and had to store x, y, z, colour etc… for each atom, then yes it would certainly use up a lot of memory. But instead we've found another way of doing it. I could say we use less memory than what the current polygon system uses, but if I did that I think I'd exceeded my quote of unbelievable claims for the day. So well leave that for future demonstrations.
GameSpy: Another issue with point cloud systems is the difficulty of doing detailed animation, and we've noticed that none of your demos show anything other than very rudimentary movement. Will your technology allow for animation that is as detailed as we're accustomed to in the polygon world, and when will you show it off? Will animators be able to use the animation tools they're accustomed to using with your tech?
Bruce Dell: I think we are criticized the most in the area of animation. Yes we can do animation, but it's not finished yet. Last time, we learnt that if we were to put anything on the internet that wasn't finished, there would be hordes of forum people who are more grumpy than that donkey from Winnie the Pooh, who would point the finger and say "look at that, that doesn't look as good as polygons" no matter how hard we tried to say, "but we are only half done". I'm sure our supporters understand the wisdom of us being silent on the topic of animation until it's completed. I think when it comes to animation you will all be pleasantly surprised at what we've achieved.
GameSpy: The lighting in all of your demos seems very simplistic - is this a limitation of your technology, and if not, when will we see examples of your tech with lighting that matches the standard's today's gamers expect?
Bruce Dell: When it comes to lighting, as we said in the video, it's not quite finished yet. Unlimited detail is a geometry system, like polygons are a geometry system. Lighting is something separate. We have working examples where Unlimited Detail is using the lighting from the graphics card, so yes, they are entirely compatible. However, we're also working on a few lighting techniques of our own which you will see in the future.
GameSpy: What impact will your technology have on companies that specialize in accelerating today's games - NVIDIA and AMD to be specific?
Bruce Dell: At the moment we're running everything very well in software alone, however, we're a greedy bunch and seeing as more power is available in the GPU, why not use it? I don't see us as a threat to AMD or NVIDIA. AMD was asked by the media last week to comment on us and declined to say anything unpleasant. If we put this on CUDA and/or OPEN CL, we'll sell cards; we don't discourage sales.
GameSpy: Sixteen months ago you said you'd have the SDK ready for release in sixteen month's time - where is it?
Bruce Dell: Yes you're right, we are late. Sorry, really, really sorry, little humble mouse with big eyes sorry. We are working as hard as we can, but I think we need to get in more people and work harder. We'll be hiring soon if anyone is interested
GameSpy: What do you say in reply to Notch's comments, where he refers to you guys as snake oil salesmen? Did it upset you to see such a respected indie developer having a swing at you?
Bruce Dell: Well firstly we are all big Minecraft fans here so we were a bit surprised when he said we were trying to scam people for money! Normally at this stage in developments it's good to gather up some villains, who say "Ha Ha Ha foolish people you will never do it!'', who later go on to get proven wrong when we release realtime. But in this particular case, we certainly don't want that to end up being Notch. We have every intention of working for Notch's good opinion and we hope in time he will play more nicely with the other kiddies in the graphics industry playground.
On a tech level, Notch is saying that we have taken a raytrace engine or a limited geometry voxel engine or a splat system and are trying to say it's something new. All of those systems are very slow even with the best hardware thrown at them and that is why they aren't used. We are nothing like those systems, we run unlimited geometry in real-time using only software. He also adds up memory like we are storing XYZ and color for each atom. Of course we aren't doing that, that would gobble up everything the computer had in the first square meter. We have a different way of storing memory where it's making the atom's positions from some parameters that were stored.
I think the internet is very black and white and you're either wrong or right. I want to say that Notch isn't "wrong", he was saying what he thought with the information he had. He's since given another statement today which is a lot more positive, where he says that if he is incorrect then he would love that.
GameSpy: You've been demoing your technology for eight years, and received a $2 million grant in 2009 with the goal of supporting "programmers to convert the system from PC to game consoles, mobile phones and other platforms" but haven't released a working product yet - aren't your investors getting a little bit skittish about the time it's taking to get to market?
Bruce Dell: Well let me just clear up the time scale a bit, Euclidean has only existed for fifteen months. Before that it was just myself and Unlimited Detail was a hobby. Investors only appeared then, and the grant was only eight months ago. Would you be unhappy investors if your company made what we made ? We were the most popular video on YouTube in the world this month, and the third most discussed topic in gaming of all time. This would be worth nothing if the tech wasn't real, but our investors are the former CEO and technical director of Mincom, Australia's largest software company, so there is no technical ignorance on their side. They also aren't tyrants who took 99%, we got a very fair deal! They say they are pleased, very pleased.
GameSpy: How far away are we from seeing a real game using your technology?
Bruce Dell: Well we would be a lot less loved if we left it too long, so please know we will work as fast as we can.
I still think its snake oil, but damn it would be some sweet tech if it comes to light.
Before the industry went for polygon-based fixed-pipeline hardware accelerated rendering, there were some games using voxel engines. Specifically games from Novalogic, like the Comanche series used a software voxel engine.
The problem back then was that accelerated hardware support was non-existent, and the industry saw polygons as the easier way to provide hardware acceleration at a reasonable cost.
Times are changing though. Newer GPUs with CUDA support are now being able to handle generic high performance math on the chips, and so technologies like this are being revived. Volume rendering is extremely parallel by nature, and GPGPUs have already been started to be used for volumetric renderings of CT scans, MRIs, etc.
There were already hints from Intel a few years ago that they were going to start pushing more towards ray tracing, and this demo is just another step towards that. Like Carmack said, this isn't ready right now, but the hardware is certainly heading in that direction.
So over my head...
Yeah.... It is over my head as well... Especially since they do not explain how they are not using alot of memory and GPU processing power to create these "atoms". It really does seem like bull to me.
Nevermind that they dont show complex light sources or motion.
If anything, I could see it being a usefull tech in CAD designs if they can modify it to show stress levels on certain parts, say for instance Ansys or Pro/E, but I just cant seriously expect this to be in games anytime soon.
For those that are not familiar with these powerful programs.... These are high-dollar (Upwards of $3000 just for a 1 year license for 1 engineer) engineer programs. These are nothing like 3D Studio Max or like that.... These Will not only render what you create but will tell you where the biggest stress level points are in your design. It's a virtual simulation.
Pro Engineer (AKA Pro/E)
This is not some easy .... Modeling on Pro/E will be directly translated to a real life model. Mesurements have to be exact in the program, just like they are in real life.
Ansys is pretty much the same.
You're talking CAD-like modeling... kind of like a mix of AutoCAD and 3D Studio...
This is just a 3D rendering tech though...
I understand that... I deal with CAD designs every day. I believe there is a common ground between the two techs.
Absolutely.
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