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Unlimited Detail Technology

Started by owl Apr 3, 2011 at 5:04 PM 44 replies 15.4k views

Original Post

Apr 3, 2011 at 5:04 PM

I was chillin on youtube and then I came across this.

In short it states that they can model a world using dots instead of polygons and that then the renderer only process the data that matches each pixel of the screen. So they can have a virtually endless world and only render the parts of it that correlates with each one of the pixels on the screen. They state that they do this by making use of a sort of a search engine that seeks for such dots.

Sound plausible and there is plenty of footage of it in this video.

BenBowen

Apr 3, 2011 at 5:51 PM

So it's not really unlimited... It's just a bit like culled raytracing, but with a search algorithm. I'm interested in what decent art would look like with this.

kiwibonga

Apr 3, 2011 at 6:13 PM

They changed their name to Euclideon not too long ago.

Apparently "Euclideon was the recipient of the largest commercialisation grant awarded by the Australian Federal Government in 2010" (wikipedia).

I thought it was a hoax, but it looks like their demos were convincing enough for some powerful people to shower them with cash. Guess we'll have to wait and see -- they seem to hint that they'll be releasing a demo sometime around the end of this year...

asdfg__12

Apr 3, 2011 at 6:23 PM

The closest thing to this I 've heard about is the sparse voxel octree raycasting technloogy. John Carmack has stated that he is experimenting with this technology for possible use in a future version of idTech. There is also an interesting discusion in this thread http://ompf.org/foru...t=904&hilit=svo. The main problem with these kinds of technology is dynamic geometry. The SVO techlology I referred to was to only be used for the static geometry. I watched the video you linked to and two more videos from the same guy and i didn't hear him say something about animation (did he?). Animation is vital to a really lifelike environment... But even for static geometry like buildings this kind of technology is interesting...

Sirisian

Apr 4, 2011 at 4:09 AM

The closest thing to this I've heard about is the sparse voxel octree raycasting technloogy. John Carmack has stated that he is experimenting with this technology for possible use in a future version of idTech. There is also an interesting discusion in this thread http://ompf.org/foru...t=904&hilit=svo. The main problem with these kinds of technology is dynamic geometry. The SVO techlology I referred to was to only be used for the static geometry. I watched the video you linked to and two more videos from the same guy and i didn't hear him say something about animation (did he?). Animation is vital to a really lifelike environment... But even for static geometry like buildings this kind of technology is interesting...

owl

Apr 4, 2011 at 4:22 AM

[quote name='D_Tr' timestamp='1301855020' post='4793896']
The closest thing to this I've heard about is the sparse voxel octree raycasting technloogy. John Carmack has stated that he is experimenting with this technology for possible use in a future version of idTech. There is also an interesting discusion in this thread http://ompf.org/foru...t=904&hilit=svo. The main problem with these kinds of technology is dynamic geometry. The SVO techlology I referred to was to only be used for the static geometry. I watched the video you linked to and two more videos from the same guy and i didn't hear him say something about animation (did he?). Animation is vital to a really lifelike environment... But even for static geometry like buildings this kind of technology is interesting...

You can do animation with SVO data sets by using boundary objects and performing ray transformations at the boundary into the AABB space of the data set. This is quickly mentioned in Laine's Nvidia paper on SVO. It's not that dynamic geometry isn't possible, it's just that it's not researched much at all.

The Euclideon guys have videos showing off animation.
[/quote]

This guy claims to have done it.

Hodgman

Apr 4, 2011 at 4:28 AM

Apparently "Euclideon was the recipient of the largest commercialisation grant awarded by the Australian Federal Government in 2010" (wikipedia).

Whaa?

Their videos have been floating around for a while, and have been treated as a complete joke by most industry people I know, probably due to the exaggerations, simplifications and downright condescension that appear in them. At the previous studio I was working at, those videos were actually emailed around the "jokes" office email list...

They were also talking about selling their completely unique ideas to nVidia, ATI and Intel, who turned them down, presumably because those 3 companies already have their own research departments capable of developing the exact same techniques already...

[edit]According to linkedin, they did hire a few programmers with gamedev experience in 2010, so it'll be interesting if they can actually turn out a piece of usable middleware...

nhold

Apr 4, 2011 at 4:34 AM

Yeah it is pretty interesting, the company was actually hiring not long ago and they are trying to develop a nice asset pipeline and engine to licence, I think they also have a lot of backing so it most probably isn't vapourware.

Sirisian

Apr 4, 2011 at 6:18 AM

[quote name='Sirisian' timestamp='1301890150' post='4794046']
[quote name='D_Tr' timestamp='1301855020' post='4793896']
The closest thing to this I've heard about is the sparse voxel octree raycasting technloogy. John Carmack has stated that he is experimenting with this technology for possible use in a future version of idTech. There is also an interesting discusion in this thread http://ompf.org/foru...t=904&hilit=svo. The main problem with these kinds of technology is dynamic geometry. The SVO techlology I referred to was to only be used for the static geometry. I watched the video you linked to and two more videos from the same guy and i didn't hear him say something about animation (did he?). Animation is vital to a really lifelike environment... But even for static geometry like buildings this kind of technology is interesting...

Krypt0n

Apr 4, 2011 at 10:05 AM

[quote name='Sirisian' timestamp='1301890150' post='4794046']
[quote name='D_Tr' timestamp='1301855020' post='4793896']
The closest thing to this I've heard about is the sparse voxel octree raycasting technloogy. John Carmack has stated that he is experimenting with this technology for possible use in a future version of idTech. There is also an interesting discusion in this thread http://ompf.org/foru...t=904&hilit=svo. The main problem with these kinds of technology is dynamic geometry. The SVO techlology I referred to was to only be used for the static geometry. I watched the video you linked to and two more videos from the same guy and i didn't hear him say something about animation (did he?). Animation is vital to a really lifelike environment... But even for static geometry like buildings this kind of technology is interesting...

owl

Apr 4, 2011 at 10:08 AM

so do I claim

http://twitpic.com/3rm2sa

still working on a show off with better assets with some million polys.

I've seen your work before yes

Yet, his video is more impressive. You gotta admit that.

Krypt0n

Apr 4, 2011 at 10:25 AM

[quote name='Krypt0n' timestamp='1301911512' post='4794129']
so do I claim

http://twitpic.com/3rm2sa

still working on a show off with better assets with some million polys.

owl

Apr 4, 2011 at 10:47 AM

[quote name='owl' timestamp='1301911716' post='4794130']
[quote name='Krypt0n' timestamp='1301911512' post='4794129']
so do I claim

http://twitpic.com/3rm2sa

still working on a show off with better assets with some million polys.

Krypt0n

Apr 4, 2011 at 11:21 AM

[quote name='Krypt0n' timestamp='1301912728' post='4794138']
[quote name='owl' timestamp='1301911716' post='4794130']
[quote name='Krypt0n' timestamp='1301911512' post='4794129']
so do I claim

http://twitpic.com/3rm2sa

still working on a show off with better assets with some million polys.

I've seen your work before yes

Yet, his video is more impressive. You gotta admit that.
[/quote] yes, I admit; it's usually about better art than better tech, yet people think they judge tech.

that's why I'm working on a better looking techdemo, with the same tech I have since quite some time. [edit: by that I mean the same voxel tech, but adding HDR rendering with nice tone mapping, adding a nice high poly enviropment, using tesselated and displaced animated/skinned meshes as source etc. ; that takes quite some time ]
[/quote]

What would it take to make it better? I mean the art.
[/quote]
usually artists , no, really, it needs them. if you look at good looking games like crysis, it's like 50% art that makes it look good, same tools, same engine in the hand of coders, and you'd fail. (I feel sorry for those artists, that make that awesome art and just the tech is glorified and only some underground insider art forums recognize their stunning work. e.g. Hanno : http://forums.cgsoci...ad.php?t=961315 , I'd love to have one day the money to pay those artist )

I think that "unlimited detail technology" demonstration on youtube has the same issue, maybe they got some nice tech working, but because of that bad and repetitive art, everyone judges them to be a joke or even vapor ware. same tech in the hands of Crytek's or Epic's artist would probably result in a stunning demo. (it's true that their talk sounds a bit niffy, but on the other side, they seem to be really confident of their work, it's not the worst thing to be that proud of your own work).

So, as I don't have the money to pay artist of that quality, I try the way Ashaman and Synthesizer suggested in my thread some time before (http://www.gamedev.n...age__p__4762142), as to my surprise I realized the Doom3 assets have displacement maps, and I tessellate the doom3 meshes ( in case you didn't see http://twitpic.com/3wozra ).

I'm somehow happy for those UDT guys, that they got the luck to rise some money that allows them to prove their claims. Of course, there is still the chance they might not get it done or it's vapor ware, but at least they have now the possibility.

BenBowen

Apr 4, 2011 at 4:18 PM

Yeah, I think this "Unlimited Detail Technology" company is going to die out without anything to show off. The way the guy talks about "polygon technology" is certainly good for making fun of. Honestly, they have a good idea, but they don't know how to do it right. Ehm..

kiwibonga

Apr 4, 2011 at 4:31 PM

Don't be so quick to dismiss them... The videos are obviously geared towards potential investors -- they're sitting on a pretty hot technological breakthrough, so they can't even afford to post an executable or reveal anything that could lead others to reproduce those results.

enunes

Apr 4, 2011 at 7:27 PM

I have a question on this.

How strongly does this impact development/graphics programming?

Assuming this technology is available in a, say, ten years future, does something like this cause a dramatical change in graphics development or can the current development model still be used?
That is, is this change more of a graphics pipeline change (somewhat not affecting much the final developer) or more like needing a total graphics API redesign?

BenBowen

Apr 4, 2011 at 8:12 PM

they're sitting on a pretty hot technological breakthrough, so they can't even afford to post an executable or reveal anything that could lead others to reproduce those results. [/quote]

Any well-off graphics company could EASILY reproduce the results.

owl

Apr 4, 2011 at 8:34 PM

[quote name='owl' timestamp='1301914039' post='4794145']
[quote name='Krypt0n' timestamp='1301912728' post='4794138']
[quote name='owl' timestamp='1301911716' post='4794130']
[quote name='Krypt0n' timestamp='1301911512' post='4794129']
so do I claim

http://twitpic.com/3rm2sa

still working on a show off with better assets with some million polys.

I've seen your work before yes

Yet, his video is more impressive. You gotta admit that.
[/quote] yes, I admit; it's usually about better art than better tech, yet people think they judge tech.

that's why I'm working on a better looking techdemo, with the same tech I have since quite some time. [edit: by that I mean the same voxel tech, but adding HDR rendering with nice tone mapping, adding a nice high poly enviropment, using tesselated and displaced animated/skinned meshes as source etc. ; that takes quite some time ]
[/quote]

What would it take to make it better? I mean the art.
[/quote]
usually artists , no, really, it needs them. if you look at good looking games like crysis, it's like 50% art that makes it look good, same tools, same engine in the hand of coders, and you'd fail. (I feel sorry for those artists, that make that awesome art and just the tech is glorified and only some underground insider art forums recognize their stunning work. e.g. Hanno : http://forums.cgsoci...ad.php?t=961315 , I'd love to have one day the money to pay those artist )

I think that "unlimited detail technology" demonstration on youtube has the same issue, maybe they got some nice tech working, but because of that bad and repetitive art, everyone judges them to be a joke or even vapor ware. same tech in the hands of Crytek's or Epic's artist would probably result in a stunning demo. (it's true that their talk sounds a bit niffy, but on the other side, they seem to be really confident of their work, it's not the worst thing to be that proud of your own work).
[/quote]

I suffer from that too. It even helps the development process to have some visually appealing reward once in a while.

and I tessellate the doom3 meshes ( in case you didn't see http://twitpic.com/3wozra ).[/quote]

Is that made out of voxels too?

Locater16

Apr 4, 2011 at 11:02 PM

they're sitting on a pretty hot technological breakthrough, so they can't even afford to post an executable or reveal anything that could lead others to reproduce those results.

Any well-off graphics company could EASILY reproduce the results.
[/quote]

Yep, successful middleware is almost universally based of making tools, even the big engine licenses like UE3 mostly make their sales off good tools.

Speaking of which, the demonstrations of animations have me wondering if this will indeed be the future. No need for base meshes and displacement or normal maps, and that Lionhead demonstration already shows art tools that could take advantage of such. My main question is what sort of disk space is going to be taken up by these models. Higher profit margins means digital distribution is going to be quite popular on the next generation of consoles, but few will want to download a fifty gig game.

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