New Graphics Technology?

[Madfish]

Not picking sides. The only side I pick is the one saying that this is not magic or a scam.
There are a number of engines in development that use new approaches to the old voxel technology or are going for atomic / point clouds. I couldn't care less which technology sees the light of the day first but it isn't a scam and most certainly not fake or a lie.

[EDIT]Since it's worded weird again: I'm not defending THIS company. In fact they way the present it is surprisingly arrogant and suspicious.
Couple things I find really questionable:
*The guy doesn't know what LOD is / means (not level of distance but level of detail)
*He messes up where tesselation was mentioned or rather what engines / games have it implemented. Even if he's doing a different tech he should know about such basic things that every gamer kid could tell you about.
*He messes up often when it comes to numbers - they're rarely precise - uncommon for an engineer.
*Weird presentation of the "team" at the end, even containing advertisement for a flower shop.
and other stuff. But I still hope that real investors would test it thouroughly anyways. If I were a big games company I'd go there and have them show me before putting millions on the table.
So there's suspicion and hope. [/EDIT]


Of course we won't see it tomorrow - not even with a billion dollar investment. Both hard and software need to grow a bit more. But saying "notch" said is just weird. Especially because "notch" has a few mistakes in his posts and also because "notch" needs to clean his own backyard first. Minecraft is surely a game in a questionable state but that's not this threads topic. :p


One thing is certain though. Newer games require such massive amounts of content that the classical polygon approach is simply impossible to maintain. For example modern shooters with destructible houses etc. - you simply can't afford those hordes of people crafting polygon models for all different kinds of destruction etc. anymore. Things need to go from "handmade" towards a more automatic approach through defined materials that respond naturally.


If we're lucky the next IL-2 in 10 years uses such technology. An engine that'd let us do ermegency landings in the sand of african deserts. We could see the wheels digging into the sand then being ripped off along with the gear, being left behind on the ground while the wings slice into it and cause a rain of dust, leaving some of it settling down on the bent fuselage. The canope opens with a cranky sound and wind blows sand onto the instrument panel...

I'd say let's hope they get things going quickly

[CharveL]

Funny but I don't really see the "arrogance" with this guy that others do. He's clearly not a marketing trained guy so he doesn't come across very well but that doesn't have any bearing on the technology he's pimping whether good or not so good. I have to admit I was saying to myself, "wtf??" when he used the LOD acronym wrong.

But short of some elaborate conspiracy hoax where the interviewer was in on it and they played some well-timed, pre-rendered movie while pretending to move it around with a controller, I think it's pretty clear that the engine works. Who knows if there's some major brick wall limitation lurking behind the scenes that makes it completely useless for games.

To me, it seems like there is a huge database storing each cloud point atom's position and attributes. The engine has to:

a) determine by means of controller movement and position of camera on the map, which scene will be displayed next.

b) Then go fetch say 1280x720 pixels every 1/30th (or whatever speed it can) of a second.

c) display it on the screen.

By not having to determine and process visible triangles in a scene, many of which will not be seen, it should be more efficient in theory. This is a vast oversimplification because I can see where it would get difficult determining, say, what one screen pixel should look like when, at a distance, there are 600 pixels in that space. Or how do you go about deforming and applying physics to the world beyond the few canned animations in the video (grass waving). Wouldn't it work at least as well as voxels? Unless the additional detail/fidelity brings physics calculations to the computer's knees having to process 64 pixels per millimeter.

But still, it seems that this is achievable, especially once they start tapping the GPU. At the very least I can see Microsoft scooping them up to use in their Photosynth technology before it starts getting used in games.

Apparently they aren't even asking for anymore money right now as they have enough to get to the next stage, so just guessing that it's a scam as a reactionary statement to set oneself up to look smart if it turns out that way, why not just take a look at what's there with interest and hold off on sending them a cheque they don't even want?

Funny, I've been following graphics since the original Doom/Duke Nukem days with interest and must have missed this Notch guy. Although I'm sure he's very talented and his game a load of fun, I can't really recall him being any expert in all things graphics. Carmack on the other hand should know his stuff but his time is long passed as far as cutting edge relevance afaik.

Meanwhile I'm going to stay interested and healthily skeptical, looking forward to what they manage to come up with the next time they come out of hibernation.