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Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam

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Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam

#41

Post by cube13 »

martinkallstrom wrote: post #40
cube13 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I didn't know that there is a specific time limit to launching? I must have missed something in startup school. If you're going to promise specific features(in this case, dynamic lighting, shadows, and animations), then you damn well had better deliver some part of least one of those after a year. It doesn't matter if it's handwavey or anything, you should show that the last year's efforts and money haven't been was…

Ok then, sorry. I sincerely didn't know that they are using published code and claiming it to be their own.

I didn't mean to imply that they are copying the open source code directly. Without a copy of their code, it's wrong to make that assumption. I'm saying that their entire rendering process, as described in the video, sounds suspiciously like what other people have released in whitepapers and source.

It probably is a completely original implementation, but I do not believe that any of the algorithms being used are original. That is where I think Notch is coming from when he calls it a "scam". It's piggybacking on other people's work, while claiming that it's their own.

Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam

#42

Post by btilly »

delinka wrote: post #10
derefr wrote: post #8

Earlier 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…

Looking at http://kottke.org/10/02/insanely-deep-fractal-zoom my brain keeps on accepting waves of new detail.

Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam

#43

Post by Goladus »

martinkallstrom wrote: post #38
MostAwesomeDude wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the same math as Notch, independently of him, and came to the same result: This will never run on current consumer hardware because of space and computation constraints. I don't think this is a massive stretch considering the numbers involved.

The math Notch did was to prove that they are using procedural generation of geometry, which makes it feasible. In his mind it also makes it a scam. Beats me why.

Euclideon are not saying they are more awesome than everyone, they are saying they are up against the polygon industry.

The point is that they're the only ones being deliberately misleading in order to attract investment, which is pretty easy to see as unfair. There's no mention that the variety of what you're seeing is severely technically limited by space, despite specific attention being given to the fact that a "real video game would use artists and everything would look a lot better"

Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam

#44

Post by mey »

martinkallstrom wrote: post #29

I have the highest respect for you Notch and personally know people on your team (Carl), but you're out on a limb here. Sparse Voxel Octrees are frickin awesome and Euclideon aren't wrong for saying so. There are drawbacks with them, but they are one by one being picked off by research. Animation is one example, dynamic lighting and shadows can be done in screen space. There is a real chance that soon enough voxels a…

To me the video is a scam. It gained massive attention attempting to compare itself to contemporary game engines without clearly representing any of it's limitations that prevent it from being used for anything. To me is screams as a way to get enough attention to continue funding of the project with no short term result (at least in the video game field that they are contrasting themselves with.)

They display two scenes side by side, but to the untrained observers eye, their solution looks fantastic, but there are important details that they never even touched upon. Dynamic lighting, keyframe/bone/ivk animations, physics/collisions, deformation. These are all extremely important elements in a modern video game to create the experience that consumers expect.

Someday this technology may replace the current approaches in video games, and it certainly has useful approaches in static 3D captures of real world scenes (crime scenes?) but the computation systems we will need for that aren't here.

Additionally, video gaming systems jump around in capabilities. This is becoming very relevant as casual gaming is making large waves in the handheld space. If the power/performance ratio of this approach can't beat more traditional polygon rendering, game developers won't work with it. Game companies are companies, have market demands to meet, not just play with the latest and greatest in technology.

Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam

#45

Post by ChuckMcM »

Voxels have a bad reputation in the graphics community. Back when I was absorbed in this and writing my 3D 'engine' I got to see this debate in its infancy.

There is an intermediate form, non-uniform rational b-splines or NURBs, which the first nVidia card rendered directly. That made it possible for the NV1 graphics card to render a perfect sphere with just 6 NURBs vs triangle based engines which required dozens if not hundreds of triangles to approach the visual quality of that sphere.

Of course 3Dfx (and Matrox, and NEC with their PowerVR architecture) made triangle engines, they needed fewer gates and had far easier texturing pipelines. Once the NV1 was retired I haven't seen hardware NURB support re-emerge (although it would make for a wonderful thing given a multi-billion transistor GPU).

Voxels make the argument that once you get below the oversamping fraction of a pixel, be it 1, 4, or 16, you don't need a complex structure. And while geometry culling using a z-buffer and clipping rectangle is well trod, voxel culling has some subtleties that make it more challenging.

Voxels have, to date, over promised and under delivered.

Notch's analysis is pretty much spot on, with one minor exception, the math. Just like polygon engines don't bother creating layers of polygons to represent solids, a voxel 'rock' or other solid doesn't need to represent the 'inside' with voxels, it only needs to represent the surface of the solid to a degree where you can't see between the voxels. As long as voxel resolution is comfortably above the pixel resolution of the 2D project plane (aka the screen). So lots of data to represent surfaces, but they can be 1 'atom' thick so less than the petabytes he supposed.

Rendering then is the process of taking a rectangular solid which is 1x1 pixel at the screen surface and then expands based on the field of view out from the eye, and once you've gone deep enough into the geometry such that the cross section parallell to the screen has no gaps, you can compute and render that pixel and move on. And, as the Euclideon people point out, since you're not really doing polygons at all, changing the 'complexity' (in terms of surfaces) on the scene doesn't change either the render time or the effective voxel count.

Yes, its pretty abusive of memory bandwidth, since at range the number of voxels that have to be looked at to fill a single pixel can be large. Imagine a 747 airplane flying across the sky at a visual 35,000', if its only 2 x 3 pixels by the time it renders, its still made up of potentially billions of voxels which form the surface you can see.

Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam

#46

Post by dpark »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #45

Voxels have a bad reputation in the graphics community. Back when I was absorbed in this and writing my 3D 'engine' I got to see this debate in its infancy. There is an intermediate form, non-uniform rational b-splines or NURBs, which the first nVidia card rendered directly. That made it possible for the NV1 graphics card to render a perfect sphere with just 6 NURBs vs triangle based engines which required dozens if…

> a voxel 'rock' or other solid doesn't need to represent the 'inside' with voxels

This seems to contradict Notch's (and Wikipedia's) description of a voxel. They indicate that a 3D space described by voxels has a voxel for each unit in space. The is analogous to having 1 pixel per unit of display space. If this is correct, then a rock would indeed have the inside filled with voxels.

I might be misunderstanding, though.

Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam

#47

Post by bane »

mrcharles wrote: post #35
bane wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Notch's point of the memory requirements are critical as well. For non-repetitive detail, at the levels they are talking at, it would require google size data centers to just store the data for a single 1 km x 1 km game level.

But that also makes the incorrect assumption that each of those voxels must be populated -- which isn't necessarily the case. In fact, more will be unpopulated than populated, I would expect.

Good point. Still, I wonder what the data requirements of even a sparse voxel world of this resolution would require?

Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam

#48

Post by Katan »

The two videos Euclideon both "smell" funny.

Both of them take time to explain that all of those who create games and those who create video card DON'T want something revolutionary.

Are you kidding me?

The gaming market has defined itself on change. Most games companies work really hard to throw in extra eye candy to set show up their tech against other games (including their own previous versions). You aren't going to find a more pragmatic industry than gaming.

If you show up to GDC and show a better way to do something, the next year you will have 20 game companies using the same technique.

The gaming industry is not tied to polygons. Gaming was once 2d, and countless technologies have come and gone over the years. Any technology used 20 years ago has likely been replaced 4 or 5 times.

Video card makers compete with each other on performance and features. They aren't tied to polygons either, in fact both nvidia and ati have been enabling non polygon features. Can anyone say pixel shader's or GPGPU?

So back to the original Euclidean videos. Why try to make the ridiculous point that game and hardware companies are scared of change?

Euclideon makes the point in both videos (this years and last years) so this isn't just a foot note, but part of their main sales pitch.

It also seems counter productive for their own goals. I mean, if you honestly believe that game companies will be unwilling to change since they "invested billions [in polygon tech]...", it wouldn't be very smart to create a company that sells licensees to those same companies based on the tech that they are actively fighting against?

So here is theory one...

It's a preemptive FUD strategy meant to head off any reasonable questions about the technology. I mean if someone offers legitment questions about Euclideon's tech, then they must be in the polygon conspiracy camp and are just trying to sabotage Euclideon because of all the money they've invested in polygons, right?

We live in a world where its pretty easy to prove computer technology. Just release a compiled tech demo. Companies do it all the time. Source code doesn't get released as its compiled, and it would be great marketing for the company.

No, all we get over each year is a utube video with a bunch of claims (not to mention the videos lack animation, and i have yet to see any video game, not involve some sort of 2d or 3d animation.) The lack of any sort of tech demo is significant. Most tech companies (at least the real ones) release multiple tech demos.

This all seems like smoke and mirrors. Most people who are smart enough to invent something revolutionary are smart enough to know how much bullshit is out there and how important it is to prove ones claims. In fact, if you've actually done something, the best way to different yourself from the bullshits is to prove it.

I completely agree with Notch, Euclideon's video's all appears to be pandering to investors with no real plan to deliver. Investors aren't going to question the tech as thoroughly. This is where the "Scam" part comes from.

It explains the lack of a real tech demo. It explains the videos' lack animation and it explains why the videos include odd comments about the game industry not wanting to change.

It might not of been a scam to start. It's likely that Eucldeon didn't set out to steal money from investors. I imagine they hoped to find some novel solutions and take the tech further. I'm guessing they ran into the same limitations of the tech that others have found, then panicked and started soliciting money under false pretenses.

Repeating the same fraud, one year later kind of does make this a scam.

Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam

#49

Post by zethraeus »

dpark wrote: post #46
ChuckMcM wrote: post #45

Voxels have a bad reputation in the graphics community. Back when I was absorbed in this and writing my 3D 'engine' I got to see this debate in its infancy. There is an intermediate form, non-uniform rational b-splines or NURBs, which the first nVidia card rendered directly. That made it possible for the NV1 graphics card to render a perfect sphere with just 6 NURBs vs triangle based engines which required dozens if…

> a voxel 'rock' or other solid doesn't need to represent the 'inside' with voxels This seems to contradict Notch's (and Wikipedia's) description of a voxel. They indicate that a 3D space described by voxels has a voxel for each unit in space. The is analogous to having 1 pixel per unit of display space. If this is correct, then a rock would indeed have the inside filled with voxels. I might be misunderstanding, thou…

as I understand it, the disparity in explanations can be attributed to that we're talking about using voxels in a data structure known as a sparse octree, that would in itself be used to optimize the system by, among other things, allowing only the surface information to be stored.

edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_voxel_octree

Re: Notch defends his previous statement calling Euclideon a scam

#50

Post by snoochybooch »

TillE wrote: post #11

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.

"They refuse to address the known flaws."

Also the biggest issue with Minecraft. Still waiting for a fix for zero-day exploit in SMP. If you are a server op and you play multiplayer on other peoples' servers you are vulnerable.

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