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The Gates of Argonath in VR at 50 FPS on Unreal Engine

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Re: The Gates of Argonath in VR at 50 FPS on Unreal Engine

#61

Post by jerf »

concordDance wrote: post #31
avian wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It will also lead to questions about the copyright of the resulting models I'm sure there will be no questions there. The questions about the copyright of models like DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc. exist solely because it infringes on the rights of thousands of random artists all around the world. There is no one single entity with enough power to clearly oppose it so people making the models can get away with "que…

> The questions about the copyright of models like DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc. exist solely because it infringes on the rights of thousands of random artists all around the world How does it infringe? Are your memories of a movie copyright infringement? https://youtu.be/IFe9wiDfb0E

I do enjoy that video, but also, despite my deep cynicism about copyright, I can't help but think this is not in any risk of happening. If you trace the economics it makes no sense. Why would a creator make a thing, then sell you the experience of that thing, then be upset that you have memories of the experience of that thing? If they do try to claw it back in an era where memory editation is possible, why would anybody shell out any money to have an experience if they won't be allowed to remember it tomorrow? Why would I use copyright law to prevent word-of-mouth marketing, the most powerful form of marketing there is?

The point of copyright in general is to protect the economic value for the producer. Being so grabby about "IP rights" that they literally claw back the experience of consuming it means that the economic value of the IP drops to zero. It only has value in the context of being consumed, remembered, etc., and where the person purchasing the experience has confidence that such a thing will be allowed.

I suppose hypothetical future simulated humans could be shaped and molded until they give up some real value for an "experience" they won't be allowed to remember tomorrow, but by then they have passed so far beyond what is "human" that I have no further guesses what they may act like. (That's the true meaning of the "singularity" term, not any particular future, but the point at which our predictions are meaningless.)

Re: The Gates of Argonath in VR at 50 FPS on Unreal Engine

#62

Post by Arelius »

Tepix wrote: post #3

I think it will be commonplace to virtually walk around in movie scenes turned into 3d scenery by AI by the end of next year. I can see this turning into a real industry. Who wouldn't like to wander, fly and swim around Pandora, the world of Avatar? It will also lead to questions about the copyright of the resulting models, probably somewhat dependant on how automated this process is.

Why by the end of next year? That seems optimistically short.

Why hadn't it happened this year, or last? Nanite is great, but IMO doesnt change the equation that dramatically.

The cost for a studio to manually decimate game quality versions have been small enough that of the will had been there, we could have been doing it for years.

Re: The Gates of Argonath in VR at 50 FPS on Unreal Engine

#63

Post by volkk »

alt227 wrote: post #53
yrgulation wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR capable computers are quite cheap. Cheaper than a low spec apple macbook pro running m1. For 2-3k you can get a beast of a machine running everything on real high settings.

Considring a brand new top of the line Nvidia GPU will currently cost you almost 2k, your prices feel a little ~4-5 years ago.

i don't think you need a 4090 for this. and even if you did get one, its 1600$. another 1000$ for good CPU and ram, etc. and you're well under 3k.

Re: The Gates of Argonath in VR at 50 FPS on Unreal Engine

#64

Post by baandang »

oneoff786 wrote: post #34
Tepix wrote: post #3

I think it will be commonplace to virtually walk around in movie scenes turned into 3d scenery by AI by the end of next year. I can see this turning into a real industry. Who wouldn't like to wander, fly and swim around Pandora, the world of Avatar? It will also lead to questions about the copyright of the resulting models, probably somewhat dependant on how automated this process is.

> Who wouldn't like to wander, fly and swim around Pandora, the world of Avatar This is a good example of the fundamental limits of headset VR. Jumping into a lake will never feel real. Not by touch, obviously as you can’t get wet. Not by physical movement because you almost certainly can’t move downwards irl. Not by the weight of water around you or the buoyancy you expect to feel. Not by the rotation you would expe…

Exactly. We don't have virtual reality at all. We have virtual remote viewing with sound.

We are basically at the Eliza stage of VR with a bunch of people pretending Eliza is not that far from passing the Turing Test.

Once we have virtual skin sensation and virtual physical movement there is no intellectual debate about any of this. Just instruction tutorials about how to have the experience because no marketing needed.

Once we have this I can think of far more interesting things than swimming around in the Avatar movie.

Re: The Gates of Argonath in VR at 50 FPS on Unreal Engine

#65

Post by solardev »

Daub wrote: post #38
huhtenberg wrote: post #12

I think it's worth taking a step back and just marveling at what's now possible to do with an off-the-shelf software. Yeah, it's "just" 50 fps, but ... would you just look at it! 4 years ago there was an equally fascinating "Paris apartment" VR demo, but the movement was limited and the amount of work that went into appears to have been orders of magnitude more - https://www.benoitdereau.com/ Go back 10 years and see…

Off the shelf yes, but wow…. The requirements for Unreal are unreal. Recent versions handle real-time global illumination (Lumen) and dynamically render geometry to insane levels of detail (nanite). Both of these are groundbreaking achievements. But having had to install this in a bunch of university computers I can tell you that it comes at a cost. Interestingly, the most significant issue is the space these install…

Wait, disk space was the limiting factor, not GPUs?

Re: The Gates of Argonath in VR at 50 FPS on Unreal Engine

#67

Post by smoldesu »

Arelius wrote: post #62
Tepix wrote: post #3

I think it will be commonplace to virtually walk around in movie scenes turned into 3d scenery by AI by the end of next year. I can see this turning into a real industry. Who wouldn't like to wander, fly and swim around Pandora, the world of Avatar? It will also lead to questions about the copyright of the resulting models, probably somewhat dependant on how automated this process is.

Why by the end of next year? That seems optimistically short. Why hadn't it happened this year, or last? Nanite is great, but IMO doesnt change the equation that dramatically. The cost for a studio to manually decimate game quality versions have been small enough that of the will had been there, we could have been doing it for years.

> Why hadn't it happened this year, or last?

Having loosely followed this space, I think I might actually have some input!

First off, you need a VR-ready environment. Not many companies are making these, so the only people equipped to roll this out is Valve, Meta, and possibly Unreal/Epic. Valve already did this alongside Half Life Alyx; they released certain map portions so you could freely walk around them with friends without playing the game. Meta is getting there, but the combination of low-power hardware and headset attrition doesn't leave them with much of an audience. There's also Epic, but they don't really do much in this space yet either.

So, obviously a paradigm shift is needed. And frankly, I think Universal Scene Description will be that paradigm shift. TL-DR: Nvidia came up with a new standard for 3D environments that interoperates game technology with digital effects. In theory, you could take your favorite Andor or Rings of Power scenes, drag their file into another app, and just start walking around in-scene. You may end up adjusting a few things vis-a-vis scale, but once it reaches adoption I can see it being pretty easy to work with and popular.

Maybe 'next year' is a little close, but the stars have definitely aligned already.

Re: The Gates of Argonath in VR at 50 FPS on Unreal Engine

#68

Post by smoldesu »

alt227 wrote: post #53
yrgulation wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR capable computers are quite cheap. Cheaper than a low spec apple macbook pro running m1. For 2-3k you can get a beast of a machine running everything on real high settings.

Considring a brand new top of the line Nvidia GPU will currently cost you almost 2k, your prices feel a little ~4-5 years ago.

Right. You only need a card that's more powerful than the GTX 1060 for VR though, so the actual price-of-admission is more in the $250-400 price range.

Re: The Gates of Argonath in VR at 50 FPS on Unreal Engine

#69

Post by jayd16 »

Toutouxc wrote: post #7
djmips wrote: post #4

50 FPS is too low. There's a reason that 90 FPS is the low bar for VR.

90 FPS for redrawing the image according to the motion of your head, but the actual rendering of the scene can be much slower. Motion reprojection is basically the only way to make GPU-intensive games like MSFS playable in VR on < $1000 GPUs.

Retrojection is great but it can't make up for 50 fps.

Re: The Gates of Argonath in VR at 50 FPS on Unreal Engine

#70

Post by smoldesu »

solardev wrote: post #65
Daub wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the shelf yes, but wow…. The requirements for Unreal are unreal. Recent versions handle real-time global illumination (Lumen) and dynamically render geometry to insane levels of detail (nanite). Both of these are groundbreaking achievements. But having had to install this in a bunch of university computers I can tell you that it comes at a cost. Interestingly, the most significant issue is the space these install…

Wait, disk space was the limiting factor, not GPUs?

I couldn't find the exact video, but Digital Foundry did a great breakdown on the performance bottlenecks in Unreal 5. They showed how disk speed directly influenced asset streaming, and it was pretty interesting to watch. Their HDD-speed drive choked constantly when running the UE5 demo, but a SATA SSD had enough bandwidth to handle the assets.

So, it's kinda a weird spot to be. Not every scene was streaming 250mb/s of assets, but when it did the worse drives took a notable hit to performance.

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