Unlimited Detail Technology

[Irony]

I thought of this years ago, as soon as I learned how GPUs do their work. I don't see why this wasn't invented first.

However, for the simple reason that anything simple, new, efficient or better than the current loved known must die, it will not become anything for a good while; if ever.

 

[ShogoXT]

Regardless of whether or not this is actually viable. When the hell did Notch become the expert on graphics engines!?!?!?

Seriously!?!??!

 

[qubit]

Regardless of whether or not this is actually viable. When the hell did Notch become the expert on graphics engines!?!?!?

Seriously!?!??!

One does not have to be an expert on graphics engines to realize that UDT is BS.

The whole problem with UDT has been explained several times over earlier in the thread by myself and a few others, if you'd like to read up on it.

 

[erocker]

lock it for the love of god lock it away ......

But I love seeing the hope in people's posts that this may happen one day... even though it won't.

 

[AphexDreamer]

Their 2011 Update nay sayers.

Found the vid from the discussion on Crydev.net

http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?f=126&t=60111&start=75

The video is pretty amazing if you ask me.

 

[Frick]

If they actually release an SDK it would be interesting to see what (if) this does really.

 

[AphexDreamer]

If they actually release an SDK it would be interesting to see what (if) this does really.

Some guy on youtube tries to explain it.

"Reading the article on GameInformer about this, it's actually quite simple. Only one atom is displayed per pixel, with a super efficient algorithm to find out what atom is shown on each pixel. Therefore, now matter how many atoms there are, the same number of atoms are being rendered. You could show a planet in this thing with zero lag."

I'd like to find that GameInformer Article but really sleepy (3:30AM).

It is nice to see an update.

 

[erocker]

Nothing new. It isn't any more real today as it was a few months ago.

 

[Frick]

Nothing new. It isn't any more real today as it was a few months ago.

Totally.

 

[qubit]

They've just added a few more complete-looking rendering animations, one with a gun and the colours don't look quite so samey. They've sped up some of the animations too, for some reason. Still nothing to suggest that they're not using tessellation.

 

[pantherx12]

They've just added a few more complete-looking rendering animations, one with a gun and the colours don't look quite so samey. They've sped up some of the animations too, for some reason. Still nothing to suggest that they're not using tessellation.

There's quite a far bit to suggest other wise man, it is definitely using voxels it's the other stuff people are dubious about.

As in, it being in real time, it being a doable way to make a game etc.


I'm still dubious but tessellation has nothing on the level of detail

Also this came out a while ago but for people who missed it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVB1ayT6Fdc

Interview with them.

Skip to 25 minutes in or so for real time controlled demo ( as in they're moving about willy nilly with a controller)

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Anyone notice Atomontage Engine? Unlike unlimited detail it's actually made progress, looks great, and they give way more details on just what the engine is doing. Seems a little nuts all the attention unlimited detail has gotten when this pretty much unknown engine is radically better.

http://www.atomontage.com/?id=gallery

 

[Benetanegia]

Anyone notice Atomontage Engine? Unlike unlimited detail it's actually made progress, looks great, and they give way more details on just what the engine is doing. Seems a little nuts all the attention unlimited detail has gotten when this pretty much unknown engine is radically better.

http://www.atomontage.com/?id=gallery

I've linked to Atomontage several times myself.

Atomontage is not ready for prime time either, well maybe for strategy games where there's not going to be close ups. It looks blocky still and it's not really the engines fault, but hardware limitations. Again the problem is not rendering, but creating and storing the data, and bandwidth requirements in order to load all that data. But in any case they are light years ahead of UD and it's real.

Regarding the UD video, it's the exact same video we saw several months ago. I don't see any improvement nor anything new. What animation? I see none there. Is it really the proper link? I think I'm viewing a different video or something.

 

[pantherx12]

I've linked to Atomontage several times myself.

Atomontage is not ready for prime time either, well maybe for strategy games where there's not going to be close ups. It looks blocky still and it's not really the engines fault, but hardware limitations. Again the problem is not rendering, but creating and storing the data, and bandwidth requirements in order to load all that data. But in any case they are light years ahead of UD and it's real.

Regarding the UD video, it's the exact same video we saw several months ago. I don't see any improvement nor anything new. What animation? I see none there. Is it really the proper link? I think I'm viewing a different video or something.

The one aphex linked to is old it was the second video posted, the one I linked to is the 3rd video and has some extra bits ( like the real time section)

Even if this is BS it's still fun to watch the development.

Bruce Dells voice is damn annoying though

 

[qubit]

What animation? I see none there.

Assuming you're referring to my post, I'm talking about the movement through the virtual world has been sped up. The world itself was indeed not animated.

 

[Benetanegia]

The one aphex linked to is old it was the second video posted, the one I linked to is the 3rd video and has some extra bits ( like the real time section)

Even if this is BS it's still fun to watch the development.

Bruce Dells voice is damn annoying though

Yeah that one was posted several months ago too, and shows no progress either. No animations basically. The thing being real time is of no consequence, because it's not their rendering method which is questioned. There's literally hundreds of voxel rendering engines out there (many made by students*) and all of them do the exact same thing, render one voxel/point per pixel. The rendering algorithm is actually far simpler than rasterization from what I've read*. The problem is always on how to move data around. It's the exact same problem that ray-tracing or ray-casting rendering has.

Until they release a demo so that everyone can use it, test it and scrutinize it, this is all pure BS. They could have 1 TB of data on that laptop for all we know, and use flags so as to know what needs to be renderend/loaded to memory and what not depending on where they are (rendering based on cells), which is something nearly all 3D engines used to do in the past, but it's imposible to do today because of the sheer ammount of work it would require to put flags on the many ammount of detail that games have today.

* Apparently nearly every single student learning how to program game engines starts a ray-casting project, believing it's the best thing ever. Of course they all end up realizing that no matter how efficient the method is for putting pixels on screen (theoretical pixels, as in only weighting in the input and output of the algorithm), the problem is not there, but on how to create and store that data and how to move that data from HDD to main memory to cache.

i.e You can make a wall with 2 polys and 1 texture, but you would need several thousands if not millions of voxels/points to represent the same wall. An sphere is all the same, you can represent/fake an sphere/circle with a very limited amount of polys/lines and shading, but you would require and infinite amount of points for doint it without leaving holes.

Assuming you're referring to my post, I'm talking about the movement through the virtual world has been sped up. The world itself was indeed not animated.

Ah, since you mentioned guns, I thought you were watching a different video. I later realized it's the scenes from Bulletstorm that have guns on it.

 

[qubit]

Ah, since you mentioned guns, I thought you were watching a different video. I later realized it's the scenes from Bulletstorm that have guns on it.

And there's me thinking they'd added something to it. :shadedshu I really couldn't be bothered to sit through the whole 7 minutes of that video, so skipped through it and hadn't realized those were from Bulletstorm. It explains why the curves looked angular like they do on every other game I've seen. Thanks for clarifying.

So meh, nothing new here, let's move along.

 

[pantherx12]

They've pretty much stated they won't be posting any news for another year ( when they posted their last video)

So I guess we can let the thread die until then XD

 

[scaminatrix]

So nothing new except for more shading. I'm pretty sure most of the video is reused material from the old video.

Bruce Dells voice is damn annoying though

He sounds like Stewie Griffin after puberty. Very annoying.

 

[AphexDreamer]

They've pretty much stated they won't be posting any news for another year ( when they posted their last video)

So I guess we can let the thread die until then XD

And when they release the SDK Qubit will still be saying how this is fake.

I mean he doesn't even watch the videos... he has it so set in his mind that it is fake. It is real, but whether or not you could develop a game with the technology is questionable.

We shall see in due time how far they manage to get. The detail was pretty sweet though.

 

[qubit]

And when they release the SDK Qubit will still be saying how this is fake.

I mean he doesn't even watch the videos... he has it so set in his mind that it is fake. It is real, but whether or not you could develop a game with the technology is questionable.

We shall see in due time how far they manage to get. The detail was pretty sweet though.

Yup, it's fake and it's not only me saying it. There's lots of tells to demonstrate this and all this has been explained several times over near the start of this thread. I'll just repeat the most pertinent bit: Dell claims completely unlimited detail with no qualifier at all and repeats this claim over and over (he even did so in that sham interview, which I did watch all of) and reckons it can run on a mobile phone. Unlimited is another way of saying infinity in regular language. Nothing in this universe can do infinity, hence he's talking BS.

 

[AphexDreamer]

Yup, it's fake and it's not only me saying it. There's lots of tells to demonstrate this and all this has been explained several times over near the start of this thread. I'll just repeat the most pertinent bit: Dell claims completely unlimited detail with no qualifier at all and repeats this claim over and over (he even did so in that sham interview, which I did watch all of) and reckons it can run on a mobile phone. Unlimited is another way of saying infinity in regular language. Nothing in this universe can do infinity, hence he's talking BS.

The Unlimited part is just a name and it makes sense that he chose that name for the technology. What you can do in the Engine is now technically unlimited but of course restriction still apply, like RAM, Hard Drive space (not sure if his engine does anything procedurally) but not the restrictions of detail you can put in game which is still restricted by the art designers/developer anyways. So no, it never was truly infinite, restrictions always apply. Even the scanned images of objects have a finite detail.
In the Video I believe he says the detail is 100,000 times that of a polygon count game (Not sure which one he is referencing) and he even converts how many polygons it would equate too (a rather large number), that is obviously a finite answer.

 

[pantherx12]

Yup, it's fake and it's not only me saying it. There's lots of tells to demonstrate this and all this has been explained several times over near the start of this thread. I'll just repeat the most pertinent bit: Dell claims completely unlimited detail with no qualifier at all and repeats this claim over and over (he even did so in that sham interview, which I did watch all of) and reckons it can run on a mobile phone. Unlimited is another way of saying infinity in regular language. Nothing in this universe can do infinity, hence he's talking BS.

Protip : infinity and unlimited are not number.

I.E what he's saying is " As much detail as you care to put into it"

English sah, you need to brush up

 

[qubit]

The Unlimited part is just a name and it makes sense that he chose that name for the technology.

It could be just a name, but it isn't given the way he's used it without a qualifier. The fact that he used some numbers in the demos doesn't change anything.

 

[pantherx12]

It could be just a name, but it isn't given the way he's used it without a qualifier. The fact that he used some numbers in the demos doesn't change anything.

Unlimited
" Not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent."

That is ALL he is saying, he's saying there isn't a cap to the detail.

As in theory it will only display 1920x1080 voxels on a hd screen the amount of voxels in total that you could have you only be limited by storage.

That is unlimited.

The software hasn't got a limit.

( All of this is assuming it's true of course, but seems you misunderstand what unlimited means)