Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine • Hacker News Board

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#81

Post by unconed » Sat, Nov 26, 2011, 5:37 AM UTC

marshray wrote: post #78

pavlov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that indicative of anything but a thought-out publicity strategy? If one were in the perpetual-motion machine business, taking a calm attitude towards haters would be pretty much the only option, since there would be no way to argue with them.

... and if he were not in the perpetual-motion machine business taking a calm attitude wouldn't be a bad idea either. So logically it's not a very informative data point. Nevertheless, I did watch him interviewed and give the real-time interactivity demo to an AU gamer mag a few months ago (I think it's still on Youtube). I know a bit about the traditional polygon rendering pipeline and I was quite impressed with his…

As someone who knows more than 'a bit', I can tell you, it smells like snake oil from miles away. All the obvious signs are there: needlessly bashing existing tech, handwaving around very hard problems and demo videos that are staged to hide the obvious flaws from the untrained eye.

Plus, they've been hyping up the same tech for years now, with very little progress. People keep throwing the same criticisms at them, and they keep delivering very unimpressive responses.

If they've indeed scored $2 million of government grants already with this demo, as others allege, then it couldn't be more obvious: it's a zombie company designed to look impressive and leech off investor money, nothing more. It's centered around tech that has already been explored thoroughly by academia and industry, and we know where the practical problems lie in turning it into a viable game tech.

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#82

Post by idspispopd » Sat, Nov 26, 2011, 6:00 AM UTC

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 was going to mention minecraft here, as it's using a voxel system where by the local volume is divided into "chunks" that are generated based on an algorithm or saved data. This has simulation advantages over similar software which uses a polygon mesh(e.g. 'From Dust'). Editing in polygons are merely computational changes to the surface, rather than removing voxel by voxel.) Editing the world in 'From Dust' is thus not too dissimilar to polygon geometry modelling in 3d software.

A simple example of the difference this affords is that large dynamic changes(e.g. a tornado 'mod') are the result of simply moving voxels around and letting the world renderer do it's thing. Where a polygon based system has to computationally alter the various surfaces to represent the changes made, which can be quite a bit more 'work' for programming the various scenarios.

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#83

Post by idspispopd » Sat, Nov 26, 2011, 6:08 AM UTC

ldar15 wrote: post #80

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 thought I'd read the whole article since some are still commenting on it. First of all, if someone were to post an article on HN about a new technology that gets recursive compression (you can compress something 80%, and then do that again and again ) because "they have a new algorithm", they would be laughed off the front page. Some people just don't know that that is impossible. Is this is what is being claimed h…

Minecraft demonstrates that (despite its possibly-inefficient coding) unique voxel based geometry is cpu heavy, and to pretend otherwise is fraud. From the outset it's obvious that recursion is affording the 'infinite' tag for this technology.

Interestingly this technology or even this idea isn't anything new. A nice way of summarising it is 3d fractals, sure it's infinite and richly detailed. But it's the same thing over and over again.

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#84

Post by buff-a » Sat, Nov 26, 2011, 7:08 AM UTC

idspispopd wrote: post #82

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 was going to mention minecraft here, as it's using a voxel system where by the local volume is divided into "chunks" that are generated based on an algorithm or saved data. This has simulation advantages over similar software which uses a polygon mesh(e.g. 'From Dust'). Editing in polygons are merely computational changes to the surface, rather than removing voxel by voxel.) Editing the world in 'From Dust' is thus…

Unfortunately, this engine can only create an entire world out of voxels because it uses insane levels of repetition, i.e. compression. As soon as you do any of the kinds of interesting things that voxels let you do, you have instantly lost that repetition, and your "42 trillion" voxels are suddenly 42 trillion bytes. GLWT.

Ironically, I see pretty effective tornado effects in movies all the time, using polygons. An audience will happily believe that a tornado is composed of solid pieces of geometry (such as a car, or a cow, or individual roofing tiles) because they've seen it on TV. Tornadoes do not deconstitute matter as far as I'm aware. Thus hierarchical polygon models are ideal for tornadoes.

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#85

Post by buff-a » Sat, Nov 26, 2011, 7:24 AM UTC

rkalla wrote: post #77

I am surprisd by the lack of interest in the search algorithm Dell proposes he designed and is using. Searching such a large problem space for 1 to 2 million results 25x a second is amazingly impressive... This is what i am most curious about at the moment... Also how he is storing the full voxel point data for any given world that needs to be searchd in real time. Replicated data or not (i.e. similar to GIF color da…

Its hierarchical data, most nodes of which are empty at the highest level, or 100% solid, terminating the search. Its basically a specific optimization of raytracing as far as I can tell.

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#86

Post by buff-a » Sat, Nov 26, 2011, 7:39 AM UTC

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…

That's what surprised me most about this article: they crow that it's a CPU-only technology... why?

Because they don't know where raytracing research has gotten to with GPGPUs. Indeed if a few years ago you had told me that GPGPUs would be handling the insanely branching search of raytracing I'd have told you you were mad. Now we have iray. Bottom line: yes, its a staggeringly inefficient algorithm compared to a CPU, but I've got 480 cores!!!

I'll place money that this technique is just raytracing with a nice, hierarchical voxel tree. Plenty of work being/been done on combining such spatial subdivisions with SIMD. Usually the search ends on a polygon with a collision test. The idea here, which I havent come across (but I've not read every paper) is to store the subdivision down to sub-poly level so that you can skip the collision test. I hope they still share surface information between voxels, but maybe not. Essentially there are plenty of researchers who could implement their algorithm right now by adding "return true" for their poly hit test and increasing the subdivision threshold.

As Carmack said 114 days ago, "Nice idea. Be a few years till its viable."

But I'd be surprised if its this team that delivers the goods. They seem woefully uninterested in the wealth of research in the area.

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#87

Post by idspispopd » Sat, Nov 26, 2011, 9:53 AM UTC

buff-a wrote: post #84

idspispopd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to mention minecraft here, as it's using a voxel system where by the local volume is divided into "chunks" that are generated based on an algorithm or saved data. This has simulation advantages over similar software which uses a polygon mesh(e.g. 'From Dust'). Editing in polygons are merely computational changes to the surface, rather than removing voxel by voxel.) Editing the world in 'From Dust' is thus…

Unfortunately, this engine can only create an entire world out of voxels because it uses insane levels of repetition, i.e. compression. As soon as you do any of the kinds of interesting things that voxels let you do, you have instantly lost that repetition, and your "42 trillion" voxels are suddenly 42 trillion bytes. GLWT. Ironically, I see pretty effective tornado effects in movies all the time, using polygons. An…

I feel like you didn't actually read my comment. Minecraft is a perfect example of how non-repetitive voxel worlds are processor intensive, and rather, this serves as a demonstration that unless fractal-like repetition is used then current day computers are not up to the task of detailed voxel worlds. (minecraft is a cpu hog.) It's trivially clear that this example is the result of repetition and not any breakthrough technology.

Also I feel like your example is confused, I'm trying to be polite, but I think you should do some research about what this is before writing a counterpoint like you have. (what you've written isn't really meaningful.)

Let's take an example of a whirl wind in a desert or dusty plain, in a polygon mesh you're not seeing individual sand grains being lifted from the polygon surface then flying around and landing somewhere else forming a pile, as you have suggested. In a voxel simulation you would however see just that.

Now ignoring post production, what you're seeing is a well textured, but (crucially) introduced, particle effect and maybe some surface deformation for the sandy hill that is being destroyed. (This isn't how the effect is done in film by the way.)

Translating (i.e moving) cows and other objects is actually more on par with how voxels work. I.e. moving an object through space and placing it somewhere else. So you were half right in your thinking that way.

To finalise my point, the tornado "mod" example that I cited wasn't me discounting polygons as you've interpreted, it was referencing this video specifically(i.e showing how voxels can trivialise the programming of advanced motion effects): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSEwU5IqZ4A

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#88

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 26, 2011, 11:07 AM UTC

idspispopd wrote: post #87

buff-a wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, this engine can only create an entire world out of voxels because it uses insane levels of repetition, i.e. compression. As soon as you do any of the kinds of interesting things that voxels let you do, you have instantly lost that repetition, and your "42 trillion" voxels are suddenly 42 trillion bytes. GLWT. Ironically, I see pretty effective tornado effects in movies all the time, using polygons. An…

I feel like you didn't actually read my comment. Minecraft is a perfect example of how non-repetitive voxel worlds are processor intensive, and rather, this serves as a demonstration that unless fractal-like repetition is used then current day computers are not up to the task of detailed voxel worlds. (minecraft is a cpu hog.) It's trivially clear that this example is the result of repetition and not any breakthrough…

[deleted]

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#89

Post by argimenes » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 8:46 AM UTC

If this software is a hoax -- and fair enough, it sounds too good to be true -- can someone explain how they were able to fake it in the live demo? I understand that this is supposed to be impossible, cranks often claim the establishment is 'suppressing' them, etc., etc., but if this snake oil peddling, then HOW did they do it? The demo LOOKS real.

Re: Exploring Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine

#90

Post by ldar15 » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 11:06 PM UTC

idspispopd wrote: post #83

ldar15 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought I'd read the whole article since some are still commenting on it. First of all, if someone were to post an article on HN about a new technology that gets recursive compression (you can compress something 80%, and then do that again and again ) because "they have a new algorithm", they would be laughed off the front page. Some people just don't know that that is impossible. Is this is what is being claimed h…

Minecraft demonstrates that (despite its possibly-inefficient coding) unique voxel based geometry is cpu heavy, and to pretend otherwise is fraud. From the outset it's obvious that recursion is affording the 'infinite' tag for this technology. Interestingly this technology or even this idea isn't anything new. A nice way of summarising it is 3d fractals, sure it's infinite and richly detailed. But it's the same thing…

No it doesn't. It demonstrates that Minecraft's solution is heavy. Minecraft is a cellular automaton. That's why its slow. It would be a mistake to believe that minecraft demonstrates the effectiveness of voxel technology.