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Author Topic: I want this and I want it NOW!  (Read 23332 times)
God at play

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« Reply #15 on: August 12, 2011, 02:31:29 PM »

If you've got the funding, if this isn't a scam, why not be honest about it?

The reason to be dishonest is if you're looking to create hype to get bought out, which is most likely what those funding would want to happen.
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ghostwheel

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« Reply #16 on: August 12, 2011, 09:34:50 PM »

I don't care if it new or revolutionary. It looks amazing. Also, he said quite plainly, it's not voxels. I think you're being overly cynical.
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Irony is for cowards.
Albin Bernhardsson

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« Reply #17 on: August 12, 2011, 10:10:59 PM »

And as he also said: it is voxels. Wink

I'm not being overly cynical at all. What they CLAIM to have done is something UNLIMITED. No one can ever do anything unlimited. It's not unlimited and it never will be. Not unless they break the laws of physics, it's not.

You should probably actually take and read Notch's analysis: http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8386977075/its-a-scam . It's the one mentioned in the video but never actually adressed (he also goes on to completely misrepresent what Notch said).

What this system might be good for is video games that take place in a small enclosed environment (like a couple of rooms or something) or environments that constantly repeat. It's not going to work for open-world environments or any game that includes a lot of non-repetitive enviroments, e.g. terrain.
« Last Edit: August 12, 2011, 10:19:05 PM by Chainsawkitten » Logged
Michaël Samyn

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« Reply #18 on: August 13, 2011, 08:39:28 AM »

Why don't we just wait and see and hope for the best? I think we're all experienced enough with computer hypes that we know that things don't exist before they exist. And even then it takes some times for the likes of us to get their hands on them.
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Kjell

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« Reply #19 on: August 13, 2011, 11:58:19 AM »

It's not unlimited and it never will be.

You're right, they should be saying "virtually unlimited". Even when you use 64-bit indices in your look-up code, there's still a range .. even though it's huge.

Quote
You should probably actually take and read Notch's analysis: http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8386977075/its-a-scam

Notch calculates the data under the assumption it's stored as a constant volume, while all you really need is the hull of geometry ( skipping anything inside & outside ). Something that isn't rectified in his http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8423008802/but-notch-its-not-a-scam post either.

I do agree their "marketing" is awkward at best.
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Albin Bernhardsson

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« Reply #20 on: August 13, 2011, 12:47:08 PM »

It's not nearly "virtually unlimited" either, though. Virtually unlimited would mean that it would suit all regular needs without you having to compromise (you could of course not make an infinitely huge world, but you could make a regular sized game world as they are now without problems). It won't do that; to achieve good results you're going to either have to limit the play area (or at least the number of unique objects) significantly or combine it with other technologies to achieve certain things. E,g. it won't be able to do terrain with smooth height-curves (since you can't store that much unique data); however, you could use it almost as you use a texture now by applying it to a (polygon) heightmap and let the polygons do the curves whereas the point-cloud data stands for grass and texture of it. You could use it like "tiles" (like they've done themselves, though without a heightmap like I'm talking about). Granted, I'm not that great of a programmer so I don't know if there are problems with this that I haven't thought of but it seems like it could work to me.

Notch calculates the data under the assumption it's stored as a constant volume, while all you really need is the hull of geometry ( skipping anything inside & outside ). Something that isn't rectified in his http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8423008802/but-notch-its-not-a-scam post either.
So let's assume it's just 1 mm of ground (less than they showed in the video) and no other objects exist. Just one mm of plain ground (a very moderate guess considering we are shown ground with geometry more complex than that). That's still 64 000 000 000 000 atoms. One byte per atom (which is very low for voxels, let alone impossible for point-cloud data) means 58,2 TB of data. And those are very generous approximations for the ground alone (so, no grass, rocks, etc.).


Now, what they have done (as far as I can see) is amazing. That's not the point I'm making. The problem I have is that I know they're lying. If they simply would have told the truth I'd be amazed, but now I don't know what other statements I can trust and what statements I can't. (Can I trust that it's now running on software only and not GPU considering I know they're dishonest about other stuff?)
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Kjell

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« Reply #21 on: August 13, 2011, 02:16:18 PM »

The "unlimited" aspect they refer to is that their engine can render geometry at whatever level-of-detail without significant performance differences. Whereas with polygon based renderers the polycount has a direct influence on performance regardless of the area it occupies on the screen.

So let's assume it's just 1 mm of ground and no other objects exist. That's still 64.000.000.000.000 atoms.

I doubt they store their data at a constant resolution ( at least in compressed form ). Regions of molecules that have the same content ( air, soil etc. ) don't have to be stored individually. A 2D representation ..



Can I trust that it's now running on software only and not GPU considering I know they're dishonest about other stuff?

Current GPUs aren't of much use for what they are doing actually.
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Albin Bernhardsson

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« Reply #22 on: August 13, 2011, 02:43:19 PM »

So let's assume it's just 1 mm of ground and no other objects exist. That's still 64.000.000.000.000 atoms.

I doubt they store their data at a constant resolution ( at least in compressed form ). Regions of molecules that have the same content ( air, soil etc. ) don't have to be stored individually. A 2D representation ..
64 atoms per cubic millimeter = 4x4x4. So if the ground is merely one atom thick (which we've seen it isn't*), that's still 54/4 = 13.5 TB.

* In case it is, then they lied about it when comparing it to bumpmaps.
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Kjell

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« Reply #23 on: August 13, 2011, 04:17:54 PM »

64 atoms per cubic millimeter = 4x4x4. So if the ground is merely one atom thick, that's still 54/4 = 13.5 TB.

You mean 15.3 MB Wink

Regardless, this way of calculating the "filesize" is irrelevant.
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Albin Bernhardsson

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« Reply #24 on: August 13, 2011, 04:39:50 PM »

64 atoms per cubic millimeter = 4x4x4. So if the ground is merely one atom thick, that's still 54/4 = 13.5 TB.

You mean 15.3 MB Wink
No? 10^12 * 4^2 / 1024^4 = ~14,55 TB (yeah, different from 13.5 but that's because 54TB was rounded)


Quote
Regardless, this way of calculating the "filesize" is irrelevant.
Why?
« Last Edit: August 13, 2011, 04:46:44 PM by Chainsawkitten » Logged
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