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Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

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Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#51

Post by Terretta »

dmbaggett wrote: post #36

The article sensationally positions this as some incredible breakthrough that the "old guard" of gaming is trying to suppress. More likely, the code works, but has limitations -- the same limitations that led old guard luminaries like Carmack to defer the idea for another few years. As others have pointed out, voxel-based games have been around for a long time; a recent example is the whimsical "3D Dot Game Hero" for…

In the Comanche series, "voxels" were a selling point on the box.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku-ICQvQJGI&sns=em

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche_series

No story I've seen on this engine seems to mention that series.

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#52

Post by sjm »

I'd really like to know how much memory is being used per unique model. Until we see more than a couple different models being re-used everywhere, I'm going to stay skeptical. Also his reasoning for the lack of variety of '3 weeks before Gamescom' sounds a bit BS to me, as this video has been around for much longer than Euclideon's last media-spree: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSvptZCJGyI. You would think they would have created at least one demo with a larger variety of objects by this point.

I'm also very suspicious of all this recent positive coverage of Euclideon. There was a pretty suspect feature on Euclideon on an Australian game review show called Good Game a couple weeks back, talking with this same guy, and not really making much mention of the skepticism involved (or at all if I remember correctly), and as far as I know no outspoken skeptics have been able to get their hands on it. The clip from Good Game can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_ndZ8ETbqU

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#53

Post by earlyrise »

Torn wrote: post #42
babebridou wrote: post #15

What I don't like with "Unlimited Details" is that Dell refuses to say what the engine can't do yet. We know it's a work in progress. We (the internet) are excited about it because it's an experiment that's on scale with what we could expect from that branch of 3D graphics technology. Trillions of atoms, whatever. Show us what's still in progress because the internet is skeptical about this, this and this. Hacking re…

> Dell refuses to say what the engine can't do yet. I'll go out on a limb here, and suggest it can't do real-time animation, texturing, lighting, shadows, collisions, etc. All the maps / screenshots shown seem to be static, procedurally generated and not artist-created. Dell keeps throwing around this 'Unlimited Detail' marketing phrase which is very offputting. Until it's seen in action in an actual game it can be n…

The article says that polygon objects can exist in the engine and interact with the "atoms". The polygon objects can be animated, fly around, cast shadows and interact with the rest of the world, but the article did not say anything about the atoms being animated. So I don't think you're going out on a limb, especially considering what other people (like Notch) have said on the topic. It looks like the atoms in the engine are strictly static.

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#54

Post by mambodog »

tobiasu wrote: post #2

Hmm, what's so amazing about it? It's a voxel graphic engine, of course it's going to have great detail and no polygons (duh). That's not new. Commanche had this in 1992... I'm not at all an expert in this area, can someone who is explain what the downsides of voxel graphics are? There must be some serious problems with it, because the technology is well known. Is there something new that makes this particular engine…

To be accurate, Commanche didn't have a true volumetric renderer, it was just raycasting a heightmap[1]; essentially just as much of a hollow shell as polygon rendering techniques. However, you are correct to point out that this tech is not particularly revolutionary; others such as the Atomontage engine[2] show voxels can be leveraged to create detailed, destructible organic environments.

[1] http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Realtime_Voxel_Landscape_En...

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CCZIBDt1uM

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#55

Post by stefs »

Fargren wrote: post #5
tobiasu wrote: post #2

Hmm, what's so amazing about it? It's a voxel graphic engine, of course it's going to have great detail and no polygons (duh). That's not new. Commanche had this in 1992... I'm not at all an expert in this area, can someone who is explain what the downsides of voxel graphics are? There must be some serious problems with it, because the technology is well known. Is there something new that makes this particular engine…

I think the big deal is that it's supposed to convert poligon based graphics to voxels in real time. Which I doubt it can actually do, but if it can, it would be kind of cool.

the polygon to voxel conversion is just so artists can use existing tools like 3dmax or maya, which work on polygon models. think of the trees in their demo, the models have to come from somewhere. so realtime conversion is not needed.

as far as i can tell their voxel tech is just for non-moving objects like the landscape, buildings, etc. animated and moving actors are still rendered as polygons and blended into the scene (according to the article, this already works to a certain degree, but they weren't able to give a live demo, just a video).

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#57

Post by wladimir »

dmbaggett wrote: post #36

The article sensationally positions this as some incredible breakthrough that the "old guard" of gaming is trying to suppress. More likely, the code works, but has limitations -- the same limitations that led old guard luminaries like Carmack to defer the idea for another few years. As others have pointed out, voxel-based games have been around for a long time; a recent example is the whimsical "3D Dot Game Hero" for…

I think the crossover point I mentioned earlier will come when GPUs become general-purpose enough to allow massively parallel voxel rendering implementations

Indeed. This is certainly possible with modern GPUs, and has been for a while. Voxels are pretty well-suited to GPU rendering. See the research I linked to in another reply in this thread.

I didn't get around to reading their entire article, but if they call it a CPU-only technique they are behind the curve instead of ahead.

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#58

Post by VMG »

wladimir wrote: post #39
roel_v wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still not convinced by these arguments ;) The displacement of the voxels can also be done with a simple matrix transformation, as far as I see it; same like you'd do for the nodes in a 3d model, same as you'd do it with a 'traditional' 3d pipeline (OpenGL/DirectX) - unless I'm behind the curve and animation itself is done on the GPU nowadays, but I don't think it is. Ragged boundaries wouldn't be an issue as long…

The displacement of the voxels can also be done with a simple matrix transformation, as far as I see it Yes, but the point is that you have to displace much more voxels than you'd have to displace vertices otherwise. Vertices are only on the boundaries of the object (and quite sparsely at that if you use normal mapping shaders etc wisely) but voxels fill the entire object densely...

> but voxels fill the entire object densely

I was under the impression that they fill the object's hull

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#59

Post by Geee »

dmbaggett wrote: post #36

The article sensationally positions this as some incredible breakthrough that the "old guard" of gaming is trying to suppress. More likely, the code works, but has limitations -- the same limitations that led old guard luminaries like Carmack to defer the idea for another few years. As others have pointed out, voxel-based games have been around for a long time; a recent example is the whimsical "3D Dot Game Hero" for…

You have missed the point. The claim is that Unlimited Detail offers real-time voxel rendering with unlimited detail now, not when there's more powerful computers. It doesn't need a GPU. They supposedly have a new algorithm, which would indeed be revolutionary if true.

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#60

Post by Shabaz »

kranner wrote: post #43
dmbaggett wrote: post #36

The article sensationally positions this as some incredible breakthrough that the "old guard" of gaming is trying to suppress. More likely, the code works, but has limitations -- the same limitations that led old guard luminaries like Carmack to defer the idea for another few years. As others have pointed out, voxel-based games have been around for a long time; a recent example is the whimsical "3D Dot Game Hero" for…

In the context of voxel-based games, a vote for Voxatron: http://www.lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure that either Voxatron or 3D Dot Game Heroes actually use voxel based rendering. They may or may not store their models as voxels but I'm pretty sure that at some point it's converted into a polygonal model and shoved into a traditional polygon based rasterizing pipeline. As opposed to doing some raycasting into a datastructure containing voxels (e.g. an octree), which from my very limited understanding is roughly what a voxel based rendering pipeline looks like.

Doesn't take away the fact that both games look pretty damn nifty though.

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