SGI: Computer Graphics

I think it is really funny that the term "voxel" never came up. It seems to be that, but then again, they made it sound sort of like they were trying to show only outer details, e.g. modeling the surface of a rock. In true voxel system, you'd be able to smash the rock apart and see its yummy insides, which is why those systems are so memory intensive -- space is literally subdivided along three axes and a value assigned at each point.
I figure that if you have an arbitrary shape made up of a point clouds, there isn't any reason to store non-visible points (i.e. points which are inside the rock, the previous example), which kind of leads itself to a run-length encoding sort of algorithm, e.g. this column (some X/Y point in 2D space) of points begins at height value A and goes to height value B in space. Since only the points at (X,Y,A) and (X,Y,B) would ever be visible, it wouldn't require memory usage in the same way that storing individual values at every point in the range (X,Y,A) - (X,Y,B) would like a true voxel system....which probably means that majority of the high resolution surfaces are probably static and non-destructible to minimize memory usage.

Considering the 1-point-to-1-pixel statement, it also makes me wonder whether they are trying raytracing. It probably wouldn't be too collide a ray versus a RLE height column...

I'd also like to see what happens when you zoom up to the point that their "point clouds" or "atom" or whatever start to alias multiple pixels -- if they start forming cubes, then I think I've seen enough. I couldn't tell if that happened much, but I'm talking so close that single pebble takes up my entire 1600x1200 screen. I have this funny feeling the detail wouldn't be unlimited .

Well, according to the video, the only way you would run out is if you didn't have the point cloud to a high enough resolution, so you'd just have to make sure you had enough data to be able to create the smallest discernible object?

What do you think of Nigel Farage's accent?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gm9q8ua ... re=channel

A bit of thread-revival here. But they are still on it it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00gAbgBu8R4

Me, I'll believe it when I see it

Yeah, show us a real working game for example.

Hmm.. more grandiose claims backed by zero technical information. The creator of Minecraft has weighed in here , giving their claims a thumbs-down.

Even if it is just a highly optimized implementation from some derivative SVO (Sparse Voxel Octree) graphics algorithm, and if we assume it is not a hoax, then it would be cool for some complex Virtual Scenarios / Virtual Worlds.

Of course, the maths behind it looks like impossible for anything else than a highly repetitive use for a few basic models into scene.

There's another video here answering a few of the claims made by Notch etc:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVB1ayT6Fdc

Oddly enough they aren't looking for funding or anything else, they're perfectly content to go do their thing and release it when they're happy.

I guess we'll find out in another year or so

Interesting - the latest video certainly adds a lot of legitimacy to their claims. Looks like they've definitely got an actual, unique, innovative product.

However, you may have noticed that the "island" environment in the video made generous use of instantiation - there was a lot of repeated geometry, in fact it looked as though there were only a few unique tiles of land that they combined to create the larger world environment. This makes sense when you consider that volumetric graphics primitives take lots and lots of memory since they're basically three-dimensional bitmap images. To store enough unique voxels to create the entire island would probably require terabytes of RAM, which is impossible on contemporary PC systems, and to run their proprietary "pixel search" graphics algorithm on a terabyte-sized database stored on disk would take forever. Hence, they store and load a reasonable amount of unique graphics data, and then repeat it ad nauseam to make the environment look large. So, the graphics detail is "unlimited" only in the sense that their system can draw environments of arbitrarily large size, as long as these environments are composed of a limited number of unique models.

For all practical purposes, this means that any developer using this engine must resort to a "tiled" approach to environment construction (not unlike Minecraft). This basically means that they will need some talented artists to build a small but versatile set of repeatable geometic primitives that can be instantiated and combined to create convincing world maps. For some games, this will not be a problem. The Sims, as mentioned in the video, comes to mind since by nature it lends itself to a tile-based graphics system. But for large outdoor FPS games like Crysis, it might make more sense to stick with polygons, or perhaps an engine that combines polygons and voxels for maximum efficiency. Ex: use polygons to create a large non-repeating ground surface, then detail it with instantiated voxel rocks and plants.

Despite this limitation of their "unlimited" technology, I'd still invest in their company. They really do deserve accolades for what they've accomplished. I'll bet a dual-600MHz Octane with enough RAM could probably do a decent job running their engine.

What on earth are you basing that on? Have they said anything about the hardware they use?

In the latest video they run an interactive version on an Asus laptop (i7 based). He stated it was running on a single core with no GPU assist.

And he says that the demo runs at 25-30fps, if I remember correctly, on this i7-26x0.

There is also a shorter video on their website where it is said that they have other optimized versions that run even faster (still without GPU).

A bit off-topic, but I still think that fractal algorithms still got a lot more to contribute to 3D technology... since there are not enough samples from their use on modeling and real-time animation/rendering. In fact I think that for what conceirns to 3D, they are almost totally under-used.

And for the rest, thanks @ajerimez by expanding my concepts into a more digestible way.

But of course, to say it short, I still got to see a release from any modeling/animation/rendering tool running with the assistance from their tech.

All in all, I reckon that it starts to look interesting.