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Creating 3D Environments Without Polygons
Igor Hardy writes "I've conducted an interesting interview concerning a new episodic indie adventure game series called Casebook. What's quite uncommon, especially for these kinds of independently developed and published productions, is that they include professionally created FMV — all of the footage is filmed in real locations. Yet what's even more interesting is that the games use an innovative photographic technology which recreates a fully explorable 3D environment through the use of millions of photos instead of building from polygons. The specifics of how it works are explained by Sam Clarkson, the creative director of the series."
I'm kind of amused at how well commented it is, all things considered. It's like they actually wanted it to be readable or something.
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/178177.html
Looks like they've done an okay job on the smooth transitions part.
If only they had scheduled release for a date other than April 1st!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF4zYu1nOMw
It also appears they're doing some very fancy processing to allow limited alternate viewing angles on scenes with actors. I imagine if they allow the angles to differ from the source by too much, it'd look distorted.
The youtube vid seems to go over a bunch of the "mini-games" you do while investigating. While the FMV certainly does WOW me, watching that brought me back to reality, that this is a game/point-n-click adventure.
Wouldn't it make more sense to base something on a volume particle system? You could start with only a few elemental particles ... say, three (you could get smaller but we're trying to get simple) ... and make up some rules about how they combine. make them up into, oh, say, 117 or so "elements" which you can then compound according to other rules. Each step in the chain can increase complexity.
Naw, it would never work.
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It also appears they're doing some very fancy processing to allow limited alternate viewing angles on scenes with actors. I imagine if they allow the angles to differ from the source by too much, it'd look distorted.
They probably filmed the live-action sequences with the same extreme fisheye lens(es) that they used for the static crime-scene filming. So you would be able to "look around" a bit, but not change the position of the camera, or look rotate the POV too far in any one direction.
That sort of thing has been done with still photos for quite awhile. It's basically QuickTime VR, although I saw the same thing back in the dialup BBS era called "photo bubbles".
I'm not really sure how they managed to get a patent on this, given the amount of similar work done previously. It is an interesting technique, though, even if it's only useful (in its current form at least) for a very specific type of game.
I wonder how effectively it could be combined with computer vision software. I would think it would give a much more accurate 3D map of the area given the extensive source material to work from.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
As a counterpoint, everything we see in movies is altered to make things appear more real, not necessarily ideal. Video of real moments tend to look unrealistic because the camera lens doesn't capture contextual clues that you would get if you were really in the moment. The way we setup a movie set is an attempt to compensate for the disconnection of watching a series of events happen in a scenario you can't touch, smell, or taste, and your field of vision is restricted to about 90 degrees. You can't turn your head to take in the subtle details of the surroundings.
People in above comments are talking about photogrammetry and voxels. This is not the technology refered to in this article. They specifically mention having to compress the photos to a great extent to get the game under 1 GB. I am 99% sure that what they are doing is simply storing a grid of 360 degree 'fisheye' photos, and then interpolating between them based on the camera position using some clever interpolation method. The technique is pretty obvious so I am guessing the technology they are so proud of is the interpolation method. This technique seems very restrictive to me, allowing no relighting or dynamic geometry. Its pretty much only good for this game. You can see in the video linked in a previous comment that there is no extra geometry in the scene when you are exploring it, not even your own legs ...