They refuse to address the known flaws.
This is the biggest issue. A lot of hype, but their technology isn't very useful unless they've managed to solve some major, longstanding problems. It's extremely misleading.
Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam
11–20 of 55 posts
Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Infinite" has a specific meaning. Had Jobs said "infinite pixels" he'd have suffered the same backlash. "Infinite detail" is deceptive because we know there's a practical limit. "Retina display" has no similar connotation. They chose that phrase so they could then give you a definition. "Infinite" already has a definition.
Wouldn't a fractal voxel octree generation algorithm technically be "infinite", though? You could zoom into objects as far as you pleased, and never run out of detail—which seems to satisfy any practical usage of the term "infinite detail" I can think of.
It's trivial to get 'infinite' detail when the data is repetitive. The way they claim it, they should be able to zoom into molecules, atoms and then quarks and so on. Anything else is not really infinite detail in the context of graphics.
Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't a fractal voxel octree generation algorithm technically be "infinite", though? You could zoom into objects as far as you pleased, and never run out of detail—which seems to satisfy any practical usage of the term "infinite detail" I can think of.
This gets into subjective perceptions of the detail in question. Mathematically, you are correct that fractals have infinite detail. Visually, however, it's noticeable when you've run out of interesting fractal detail and that the technique has failed to produce more detail (that the brain will acknowledge as such.) Had they said "fractal detail" not only would they have received less grief for it, but they would hav…
The detail needn't be fractal to be infinite though. It could be procedural e.g. a rough surface could be given infinite detail by using a pseudo random algorithm.
Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't a fractal voxel octree generation algorithm technically be "infinite", though? You could zoom into objects as far as you pleased, and never run out of detail—which seems to satisfy any practical usage of the term "infinite detail" I can think of.
It's trivial to get 'infinite' detail when the data is repetitive. The way they claim it, they should be able to zoom into molecules, atoms and then quarks and so on. Anything else is not really infinite detail in the context of graphics.
They probably can zoom into atoms because there are only so many different types of atoms and there are only so many quarks. So it seems even then their claim holds. On the large (buildings) macro level that might hold as well. Many details in a building, in a city are similar. A window on the left side of a house is the same as windows in the right side of a house. Even trees are similar (hell, they are self-similar, you can use a fractal to build them). Textures are often similar and repetitive.
Yeah there is this intermediate level of detail between the molecules and whole buildings (like surface imprefections, dirt) that might not be as repetitive. On the whole however I don't think their marketing claim is that fraudulent.
Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam
#15Calling their tech "infinite detail" instead of "voxels" feels no different than calling the iphone screen a "retina display" instead of listing its resolution details. Good marketing is not inherently evil. Here, though, they're suffering a huge PR backlash, which I suspect is because they're out-marketing the work of passionate amateurs and academic researchers instead of e.g. big phone companies. It admittedly doe…
>Here, though, they're suffering a huge PR backlash, which I suspect is because they're out-marketing the work of passionate amateurs and academic researchers instead of e.g. big phone companies.
From my perspective, I'm more frustrated with how they don't seem to be producing anything. They just release a PR video every year that is about the same as the PR video they released the previous year.
Until they actually produce something useful, I have no problems referring to this stuff as vaporware.
Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam
#16They have shown animation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF8A4bsfKH8
So, now we have either big landscapes with "infinite" details or we have animation (with infinite details?) but no landscapes at all. The problem is that games need both, don't they?
Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam
#17They have shown animation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF8A4bsfKH8
All I see is a tiny animation on a random YouTube account with no FPS counter...
Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam
#18I think the biggest problem that people aren't talking about is that LOD for geometry simply isn't as important as texture quality when getting close to a surface. I'm pretty sure the reason they have so many duplicate objects in the original presentation is because they simply ran out of memory to store all the texture data for the scene, because you need really high rez textures to be able to zoom in so close to ea…
The implication in the video is the are no texture maps. The geometry (I agree with those who've said voxels) contain the texture information in three dimensions. That's why zooming on the palm tree actually looks good, unlike traditional polygon/texture map rendering.
Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam
#19Not impressed by the tech but now Notch has called them scammers and liars. When does he get sued for libel?
Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam
#20Not impressed by the tech but now Notch has called them scammers and liars. When does he get sued for libel?
If they can't do anything special, and they are telling investors they are producing something revolutionary, that's a scam.
You can produce a search engine that uses LSA. Do a demo, and you can get impressive results (in some cases). But don't obscure the fact that you are using a relatively well-known technique, and ask for millions in funding on the basis that your not-so-secret sauce will make you the next Google.