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Making Graphics In Games '100,000 Times' Better?
trawg writes "A small Australian software company — backed by almost AUD$2 million in government assistance — is claiming they've developed a new technology which is '100,000 times better' for computer game graphics. It's not clear what exactly is getting multiplied, but they apparently 'make everything out of tiny little atoms instead of flat panels.' They've posted a video to YouTube which shows their new tech, which is apparently running at 20 FPS in software. It's (very) light on the technical details, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but they say an SDK is due in a few months — so stay tuned for more."
John Carmack had this to say about the company's claims: "No chance of a game on current gen systems, but maybe several years from now. Production issues will be challenging."
Which is the whole trick, this was shown off at least a year ago, it pops up now and then.
The tech precalculates a LOT, for that it needs static model information.
The site of the creators is http://unlimiteddetailtechnology.com/
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=11624.30 they talked about it last year.
They claim they can do in realtime what you say is impossible. Now, if you don't actually have any technical argument, I'll take the view of an expert: John Carmack does not think it is a scam. That said, there are big always big challenges to go from the tech demo to the finished product for sure and they are unlikely to make it especially in the current game market which is already struggling to create content.
Here, kid, as an actual graphics programmer, I'm translate Carmack's producer- and marketing-approved Twitter into plain, run-of-the-mill English for the simple-minded:
Statement: "No chance of a game on current gen systems, but maybe several years from now."
Translation: "No chance of a game on current-gen systems, nor what will be the next generation, as Wii U devkits have already been seeded to developers and it'd be foolish to think that Sony or Microsoft are very far behind. Insofar as nobody, not even me, can really predict what the game industry will be like in a year let alone several years, it's a pretty safe bet to say that it will *maybe* happen several years from now."
Statement: "Production issues will be challenging."
Translation: "It will be quite difficult to produce any real game out of this, being as it clearly appears to lack any shading model other than simple diffuse lighting and don't appear to have any kind of programmable materials pipeline whatsoever."
Ok, so we don't see them all at once. To be honest, if a middleware company can't write a furstum cull, they would be closed by now!
But what do they do then when they are not seen? Sod off for a holiday in the cloud? Seriously. I think you are missing the point. Where the hell is this data being stored, and what is the size of the data set? It's got to be in memory *at some point*, and hard disk if it's not. So how much ram/disk space will this thing use exactly? Ok, so 'most of it is calculated, somewhat like fractals', well ok. But which bits? Are the trees fractals (or L-systems maybe)?. Just the leaves? The Models of the rocks they have scanned in? The 3ds max models they have converted to point clouds? The whole island? Answers to these questions need to be provided before any games developer would even bother looking at this tech. Either it's all procedural (in which case it's utterly useless for game designers), it's primarily procedural (in which case the art director will struggle to achieve a consistent look), it's partially procedural (which will annoy the modelling & texturing departments), or it's a load of made up lies. I'm erring towards the latter.....