Unlimited Detail Engine defended

Euclideon CEO Bruce Dell responds to some skeptical critics of the seemingly impressive Unlimited Detail Engine.

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If you follow the games industry closely enough, chances are you heard about Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Engine. The engine uses voxels rather than polygons, and has promised a level of graphical fidelity orders of magnitude greater than anything we've seen using standard current tech. It all seems a little too good to be true, and the company's silence on the issue gave cause for some skepticism.

Now CEO Bruce Dell has defended the company's bold claims by allowing journalist access for a personal look at the engine's demo, and responded to some of its harshest critics.

GameInformer's hands-on claims that the demo video shown previously was legitimate, though the company arranges the voxels in a clever way to render them. The "atoms" (i.e. voxels) are arranged to be one per pixel for maximum efficiency. Essentially, the system decides what points need to be displayed to give the desired effect.

Well-known industry figures chimed in on the engine when it was shown, some more harshly than others. John Carmack, CEO of id Software, was impressed but said the technology was several years away. "[Carmack] was unaware at the time that we were running this purely in software," Dell said. "In his particular case, he and Intel had tried to go down a similar road themselves. Intel had tried making its own system in order to do things along the field of unlimited graphics. It ended up closing that avenue as it figured it was something for the distant future when computers have more power."

Meanwhile, Markus "Notch" Persson went so far as to claim the whole thing was a scam. "On the one hand, I could be nice and say, 'yes, there are scammers out there – it's fair enough to look at something and immediately label it as a scam," Dell said. "But on the other – which people have brought up – the man compared [Unlimited Detail] to three other engines. The mistakes Notch made were so bad that, if we were less kind, we would be able to really discredit his actual understanding of a lot of stuff in general. But that's honestly not our intention: we don't want to make enemies with him. We prefer to bring him around and be nice to him."

Critics have also observed the object repetition in their demo, claiming it's an inherent weakness in the engine. Dell claims that this is simply a product of the company scanning in objects on a short time frame, and says the company's next demo makes use of ex-THQ staff artists to show off more variety.

Even so, the engine isn't perfect. Euclideon claims it runs at 20 FPS at the time, and there's still plenty of room for improvement. Plus, it's a tech company, so Dell often notes that industry artists would be able to render better results. Still, Dell says he's aiming for less than a year before the software development kit starts hitting the hands of developers, so we may not have to wait much longer for devs themselves to give feedback on the viability of the system.

Editor-In-Chief
From The Chatty
  • reply
    November 23, 2011 12:00 PM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Unlimited Detail Engine defended.

    Euclideon CEO Bruce Dell responds to some skeptical critics of the seemingly impressive Unlimited Detail Engine.

    • reply
      November 23, 2011 12:09 PM

      Ugh, this again.

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      November 23, 2011 12:19 PM

      it's like the shittiest wallpaper patterns in the world COME TO LIFE

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      November 23, 2011 12:23 PM

      I don't want to be negative, but this feels like the next BitBoys.

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        November 23, 2011 1:18 PM

        Yeah, getting a whiff of that for sure.

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        November 23, 2011 2:12 PM

        I don't think so. I think they are legit as far as yes they actually have the tech up and running and what they showed is real. Their problem though is that I don't think their tech is very flexible and probably a nightmare to work with. There are so many other factors when choosing an engine and making a game than how detailed your meshes are. Having a robust material shader engine is probably more important. But like I said, there are so many other things developers want than just more detailed geometry. Any compromises you have to make to get this tech to work is where this starts to look like a scam.

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        November 23, 2011 2:49 PM

        We'll see who's laughing when my Glaze3D 4800 arrives! I bet it'll still be up to running Crysis.

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      November 23, 2011 12:25 PM

      i watched all the videos - it's impressive. most of the people just don't get it.

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        November 23, 2011 12:26 PM

        Most of the people don't get it because it's conclusive bullshit.

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          November 23, 2011 12:34 PM

          yup until i see a live demo running on my PC, i won't believe it.

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            November 23, 2011 12:37 PM

            You'll need to upgrade your PC with parts from 20 years in the future.

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            November 23, 2011 1:28 PM

            Not like that. There is absolutely nothing impossible about what you see in the videos and the techniques have been widely studies for a long time already, the trouble is this kind of tech is almost completely useless for games and I have a hard time thinking of other purposes. Anything the guy says to counter that are bullshit.
            I think it's a scam in the sense that they are making promises to get investor money and they will keep it up as long as they can. They have been at it for a long time now (I think like 5 years ago they were showing off the same stuff) and no real progress has been made because there is no real progress possible, it's that simple a procedure.
            Any graphics programmer could build this thing in a few months but they wouldn't want to wast their time.

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        November 23, 2011 1:31 PM

        [deleted]

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        November 23, 2011 7:26 PM

        Please tell us what we "don't get".

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        November 23, 2011 8:22 PM

        I am particularly interested in hearing how I don't get it. Please explain to me what I am missing. Be technical.

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      November 23, 2011 1:06 PM

      That guy needs to stop working on his engine already and start working on his communication.

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      November 23, 2011 1:34 PM

      This thing again? Two problems: 1) massive data sets, the storage and RAM requirements for non-repetitive "unlimited detail" will be astromical 2) animation and destruction are basically impossible unless they are precomputed, so it only provides a static or scripted world, never dynamic or responsive to player input.

      It's still kinda cool tech but it's not something you would really make a modern game out of. Nobody complains that the backdrops in other engines don't have enough fine detail. It's more important to have good animation and good art direction and a solid game mechanic than it is to have the ability to zoom in on a quarter lying on a tabletop.

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        November 23, 2011 1:35 PM

        Well, ok, not "nobody complains". Lots of people complain. But spending a ton of time and doubling or tripling your artist workload in order to add higher detail to non-game-essential objects is not a good investment of development resources IMO. Better to spend that effort making the game more fun.

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        November 23, 2011 1:40 PM

        It can do animation, but it's a bit crude: you can have fixed assets moving and distorting with an affine transform (I think), I don't think you can have smoothly distorting skins as you can have with poly renderers.

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        November 23, 2011 3:56 PM

        I thought destruction was trivial in voxels? Can't you just 'remove' the destroyed voxels? Seems like it would be much harder with polygons...

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        November 23, 2011 4:14 PM

        Also, for 1), couldn't they develop some fancy streaming mechanism like Rage employs for its mega-textures?

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          November 23, 2011 6:35 PM

          The data still needs somewhere to live! Do you have the petabytes of storage necessary for their claimed atomic resolution?

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            November 24, 2011 12:25 AM

            What makes you come up with petabytes? Surely there could be some de-duplication or compression that could make things manageable.

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              November 24, 2011 3:34 AM

              I forget the number, but they claimed something like 4096 voxels per square inch? That's over 6.5 terabytes of voxels for an empty 10x10x10 room, assuming one bite per voxel.

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                November 24, 2011 4:33 AM

                And it's 3am so I just computed the size for volume instead of surface area. But suffice to say it takes a fucking ton of data at that small a resolution.

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                  November 24, 2011 6:02 AM

                  Calculating volume makes sense to me... after all, you need to calculate where the bits aren't, I suppose.

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      November 23, 2011 2:13 PM

      [deleted]

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      November 23, 2011 2:29 PM

      Just needs to stop using the word unlimited.

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      November 23, 2011 2:32 PM

      he needs to stfu until they release a tech demo proving it

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        November 23, 2011 3:39 PM

        are we believing they paid off GameInformer now?

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          November 23, 2011 6:59 PM

          [deleted]

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            November 23, 2011 9:21 PM

            What engine doesn't have weaknesses or cheats. Heck anything that's not a ray trace could be considered a cheat.

            For me, if the thing runs in real time on a current gen gaming PC that's fucking awesome.

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          November 23, 2011 11:06 PM

          was that the guy that interviewed them on video? He was awful, practically blowing the car-salesman CEO dude.

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          November 23, 2011 11:59 PM

          Since when did games "journalists" ever do anything but fawn over stuff in previews, no matter how unlikely or bullshit it was.

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      November 23, 2011 2:47 PM

      [deleted]

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      November 23, 2011 3:57 PM

      I knew Notch was an asshole!

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        November 23, 2011 4:01 PM

        Im thinking the same lately, grrr

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      November 23, 2011 4:33 PM

      Call me when the world is correctly lit with animated characters running around and shooting. Until then no one particularly cares.

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      November 23, 2011 5:31 PM

      To everyone hating, research other voxel engine based games, ie, Outcast.

      That game is ancient now by internet/gaming standards, but it pulled off awesome looking style and graphics. Running entirely in software render too. There are a few other voxel games out there worth checking out also.

      I've thought for a while that a really high end voxel engine could do some really cool stuff, glad to see someone else agrees, eager to see it.

      Just wait, if it comes out and developers make some big name games with it, everyone in this comment thread is going to be like "Oh yeah, Voxel engine, I remember when they announced it, knew it was going to rock!".

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        November 23, 2011 5:45 PM

        we've been waiting since 2003, how much longer should we wait?

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        November 23, 2011 6:25 PM

        Everytime I think of a voxel engine, I think of novalogic and how incredibly crumby their engine ran on my PC even when it had a voodoo2 (the best at the time) in it.

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        November 23, 2011 7:16 PM

        YDKWTF. They only used voxels for certain parts of the game for good reason:

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

        I make games because I love to, but I also have to make money. Please tell me where the stable tools, engines and proficient workforce is to make a game using this tech.

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        November 24, 2011 12:03 AM

        Voxel engines didnt look as sexy as quake, but they were just as fun! fuk u all, i love voxels.

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        November 24, 2011 8:48 AM

        Outcast was also famous for basically being what Crysis was (and still is to some point). It ran like crap on modern PC's of the time unless you settled for a resolution of 320x200, it's maximum resolution was 512x384. It also still used polygons for everything - Except for the landscape (and water, i think).

        Same with Delta Force 1 and 2 - Landscape used voxels, everything else was polygons and the games still had to run at 320x200 to be playable on most contemporary machines.

        That, and the detail of both games' landscapes ultimately wasn't THAT impressive, especially in the DF games - Games like OFP and BF1942 weren't really that far away and outdid voxels easily with polygons. Outcast 2 was also going to eschew voxels in favour of polygons.

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      November 23, 2011 6:55 PM

      As far as I'm concerned as a physicist, Voxel would be much better than polygons. Imagine you could assign mass and electrostatic repulsion to every voxel and then simply plug in Einsteinian (or even just Newtonian) equations of motion approximated to much larger sizes. You could have perfect friction, air resistance, gravity etc.

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        November 23, 2011 7:24 PM

        And you think you could actually have a game running at a decent frame rate with that? There's a reason we mostly fake that stuff.

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      November 23, 2011 7:00 PM

      Markus 'Notch' Persson, creator of Minecraft covered this when it was first announced. You can read his explanation of why it's a scam on his blog here... http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8423008802/but-notch-its-not-a-scam

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      November 23, 2011 7:14 PM

      From what our graphics guy told me they have been showing the same stuff for years and others before them. There are major issue with voxel based geometry that aren't going to be solved any time soon because there is no compelling reason.

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      November 23, 2011 8:04 PM

      Back when this was hot news, someone got an interview with a live demo on tape. In that live demo the Unlimited Detail Engine was running on a laptop and they made a point to show there was no ethernet cable, or in fact, in cables attached to it. Then they proceded with a live demo. One where they moved around the map. So, they demonstrated that a laptop, with an i7 2630QM and 8GB of DDR3@1333 ran the demo everyone was calling fake.

      For all you haters here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVB1ayT6Fdc

      Go to 22:20, watch, then stfu, put a cone hat on ur head, and sit in the corner where you belong.

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        November 23, 2011 8:24 PM

        No one says the demo is fake. What we say is:

        1) The demo isn't doing anything that isn't already possible with modern GPUs, but at much higher quality and with much more interesting data sets.

        2) The demo cannot be extended to be useful to a game. The memory costs are prohibitive.

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          November 24, 2011 12:37 PM

          I think what most are overlooking is that they aren't even utilizing the gpu in that demo. The demo is completely software based using the cpu. It's possible that the demo, and by result a game, is using up an impractically large amount of HDD space. Perhaps that's it's achilles heel. However, seeing as so many people have been wrong about this demo in the past, about it being real, about it being practical on consumer hardware from a processing standpoint, I'm willing to entertain that these people who've created something out of the box and functional will continue to seek methods to make it entirely practical.

          Besides, why would they be getting millions of dollars of funding if the tech so impossible to implement based upon such an obvious and insurmountable thing such as storage.

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            November 24, 2011 12:57 PM

            Where have people been so wrong about the demo in the past? Show us, where people have been wrong. Even with using the GPU it's not going to equal the performance that a traditional poly rendering system any time soon. Also, governments put millions into R&D all the time that goes nowhere. Show me where any company involved in the games market like Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc, have invested millions in this engine. Just because he can keep getting enough cash to keep going doesn't mean a damn thing.

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              November 24, 2011 1:25 PM

              I haven't bothered looking at this topic since that video I posted. It's been the back of my mind though. As I recall, in terms of people being wrong, there were a great many people claiming it was pre-rendered and not in-engine. A very very great many of people. They were WRONG. If you were so out of touch to not remember that, so be it. If you simply feel it's not pertinent, then whatever as no doubt you'll want to talk about being wrong from a technical standpoint and from a technical standpoint I'm willing to bet the guy's who made this engine know a lot more about it than most anyone speculating about it on forums, or even, inside the graphics industry.

              It's true governments pour cash into projects that can't go anywhere. However, the government isn't their only investor. There's been a lot of interest from a lot of different companies. It might not be accurate to say that their interest means that this tech is feasible to implement, but it's not that big of a stretch either.


              Also, I'll just say this in regards to poly systems. While it's true this engine isn't as advanced as any traditional poly engine I'd remind you again that no poly engine can, or does, look as good as the Unlimited Detail demo by solely working in software, on a cpu. So, in terms of resolution, and performance, once they start utilizing the massive processing power of gpus you'll start to see that massive increase in performance. No doubt, that if, or when, this tech becomes standard you'll start seeing gpu's with hardware specifically designed for this type of engine like they are for polygons.

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                November 24, 2011 2:19 PM

                And yet you continue to ignore people in this thread like daVinci who know infinitely more than you and easily as much as this Dell character. You continue to bring up a point that isn't even part of this thread. No one here said it was fake.

                Show me who their big million dollar investors are and if there is one well known tech company I'll be impressed.

                Lastly, CPUs are no slouches these days, so I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that moving this render engine to the GPU is somehow going to make a night and day difference. GPUs are great for certain tasks and they might in fact be suited to accelerating this voxel based system, however that still doesn't address other issues like MASSIVE datasets, collision, animation, etc.

                So, buy into the hype all you want, but understand that you aren't posting in a forum with a bunch of rubes, there are people here that work in the industry and know what they are talking about.

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        November 23, 2011 8:31 PM

        wow, a few white knights for these guys tonight.

        they've been showing this engine off for eight years now. millions of dollars have been poured into. yet they haven't been able to put out an actual game, or even a quick little demo that we can freely download off the net. we don't know what smoke and mirrors they had going on that laptop, so the videos pretty useless.

        they need to actually produce something, and until then, it's pointless dribble.

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        November 23, 2011 9:19 PM

        [deleted]

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        November 23, 2011 10:14 PM

        Way to miss the point. In a REAL game scenario you wouldn't have cut and paste instances making up 90% of the content. That alone calls the whole thing into question. No one is saying it's not possible to have that level of detail, people are saying that actual games have much different requirements.

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          November 24, 2011 12:01 AM

          Unless it was Halo!

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          November 24, 2011 4:20 PM

          I'd never dispute that. However, many of what has been said makes everything plausible, in my eyes. Their lack of artists, lack of staff, wanting to work on the major problems rather than spend time making a demo to appease skeptics that have no bearing on those that have invested in their company. They've said they're going to release a trailer showing collision, lighting, and animations. I'm willing to entertain they'll do this, willing to entertain they'll solve most of everyone's concerns.

          I mean, people said the demo was fake, then they show otherwise, now they're saying it's impractical, when, in fact, even Carmak said it's something that'll be ready in the future. Carmak, and others, didn't spend years of their lives on this problem, if they had they might've solved it and be demoing a demo that wouldn't leave these gaping wholes which fill with doubt. They had other priorities which prevented that. These guys did put years into the issues so I find it plausible they've found ways to deal with a lot of the problems Carmak, of all people, said wouldn't be a problem in 5yrs.

          What did Carmak make his 5yr estimate on? As much as he know's, hell, exists in the world of graphics computing has he put nearly as much effort into this type of engine as Dell and his fellows? The fact is, Carmak say's what Dell is claiming to have done will be done in time. So, it stands to reason that perhaps, perhaps Dell and his fellows have found the solutions to these problems or are at the point where they know how to solve them having put years into building this engine. Perhaps I'm wrong though. It's possible that there have been quite a few others who spent years and year tinkering on this problem, full time. The thing is, I've only seen maybe, 2 other videos for engines that do anything near as complex as what they've done, and that makes it seem that the only people at the forefront of this technology are the ones who everyone is calling BS on and that makes me wonder how much can they actually know about a problem they don't have nearly as much information about.

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        November 23, 2011 10:17 PM

        Also, the power in GPU's is used to accelerate traditional polygon based games. A lot of the speed comes from major optimizations for that type of rendering. Modern GPUs are good number crunchers, but that doesn't mean you'll get the same level of performance out of them for voxel based rendering.

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          November 24, 2011 4:35 PM

          That engine is running only on a processor. A software only engine. I reason, if my 2500k@4.2 can only do one WU in F@H while my gtx570 can do 4.5 in the same time that's a lot of increased performance to gain from getting that engine to utilize a gpu. Given, I have no idea how exactly F@H utilizes a gpu, but I'm willing to bet that this Atom engine could at least match it or surpass. Also, it's worth noting that Dell has claimed they've had pixel based objects, such as a rocket, interact with objects rendered with Atoms, such as tree leaves. A high claim to be sure, but one you have to take at face value if you're going to fully consider how viable their engine might be.

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            November 25, 2011 6:52 AM

            You are grasping at straws here.

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              November 25, 2011 11:35 AM

              Considering that's all anyone can really do given how little information anyone has about this engine the arguments can really just go around in circles. Someone points out how little information they give, say that's suspect, that's sound reasoning, likewise, someone saying that they're understaffed and too busy working on their engine and with investors to bother fully informing an inconsequential public would also
              be making a valid point. At this point in time no one has enough information to make any significant conclusion.

              I mean, really. All anyone has been doing is grasping at straws. It's moot to point this out here. I mean, you guys are arguing against an engine from a technical standpoint when you have absolutely no technical details about the engine. In fact, all your technical arguments can really just be viewed simply as questions.

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                November 25, 2011 1:12 PM

                That's bullshit. A ton is know about voxel rendering and how it works and there is a good reason it isn't used at this point in time. Stop acting like this is dark magic that no one understands.

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                  November 25, 2011 4:17 PM

                  I suppose I have been acting that way. I have to admit though it's kind of hard not to. I mean, everyone called BS when the trailer was first released. They were saying it was pre-rendered. That they thought it was pre-rendered, when it was not, goes to show that to some degree it can be viewed, correctly, as 'dark magic'.

                  It's funny though. So many were calling it pre-rendered, they were proved wrong, and now they pretend like they understand what they didn't believe was real. What do I know though, Perhaps there were quite a few out there that did think it was real upon first sight and only voiced the concerns many now voice. All I know is that they were drowned out, and one of the most vocal of opponents, Notch, used terrible comparisons to this engine, so much so that even the layman couldn't take him seriously.

                  What stands out to me is that while you're claiming that a lot of people understand voxel rendering I do not see, anywhere, any example that comes anywhere close to what this engine has done, in the manner it seems to do it, and has not gotten anywhere near as much attention, or discussion, not simply due to the claims, but due to the actual demonstration of the technology. It just seems preposterous that so many can fully understand how this engine achieves what it achieves, and it's limitations, when no one else, anywhere, has done what they've done.

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        November 23, 2011 10:47 PM

        This is a very strange post. What has an ethernet cable got to do with anything? Who the heck thinks they're faking this somehow through a network? Once again, another video that fails to explain any of the fundamental concerns with this engine.

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        November 24, 2011 12:09 AM

        I happen to know the company that does IT at the facility this was recorded and I asked him about this video. He said when they were filming this segment there was an unusually high amount of data being transferred over the wifi connection.

        Just saying maybe you should put the cone on your head.

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          November 24, 2011 3:34 AM

          somebody get me a Tinfoil hat

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          November 24, 2011 4:05 PM

          Yes, it's nice that you happen to know these things.

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        November 24, 2011 1:11 AM

        What they are showing looks very static to me. What about particle effects, fluids, animations? The only use I can see for this technology (when its finally done) is for medical applications doing remote minimal invasive surgery.

        They call it unlimited detail, but I am missing many details, because all the grass, stones, palm trees etc. look the same. Trees should have different hights, Stones usually are all completely different, especially in n ature not one leaf looks exactly like the other. What I am seeing here is "unlimited detail on repetetive single objects" not an unlimited detail world, which is what I would expect from this engine.

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        November 24, 2011 3:19 AM

        so? that proves basically nothing.
        It could be procedural, it could just be a great data streaming engine.
        The usage for games is next to irrelevant given that video

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      November 23, 2011 8:42 PM

      That they haven't released a tech demo, even of their oldest stuff, is damning evidence that people should be suspicious.

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        November 23, 2011 8:44 PM

        awful sentence; whatever. Why can't I take MS's photosynth and use that to make levels in games yet

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      November 23, 2011 10:38 PM

      This reminds me of that one game I can't remember the name of that made fancy claims with amazing screenshots (in a subway or something?) way back in 2002 or so.

      This is killing me that I can't remember the title.

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        November 23, 2011 10:51 PM

        I know what you are talking about.

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          November 24, 2011 12:31 AM

          The screenshots had a green tint to them. It had a train and these boards laying around wtf....

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            November 24, 2011 1:51 AM

            Yeah and the shack was pretty excited about it at the time. Something about the shading and level of detail at the time seemed incredible.

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          November 24, 2011 12:32 AM

          eastern european developer

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            November 24, 2011 1:46 AM

            yeah it was definitely a european developer

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        November 23, 2011 10:52 PM

        You are thinking of "Amen".

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          November 24, 2011 1:50 AM

          It had a similarly generic one-word name.

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        November 23, 2011 11:37 PM

        Metro 2033

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        November 23, 2011 11:41 PM

        Comanche

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          November 24, 2011 12:08 AM

          i played that shit when i was a little kid! had no idea what the fuck but i had fun.

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        November 24, 2011 4:51 AM

        Stalker?

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          November 24, 2011 7:36 AM

          Hah, that actually fits the bill but nope, I'm pretty sure this game never came out.

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        November 24, 2011 9:04 PM

        Or how excited people got about Project Offset

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      November 23, 2011 10:55 PM

      Getting excited over this Unlimited Detail Engine is like getting excited over the pre-rendered backgrounds in Final Fantasy VII.

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      November 24, 2011 12:22 AM

      I'm nominating this thread for highest number of first time posters that wasn't about Firefall.

      Seriously, where did the crazy come from.

      qsylvr (has pulse)
      shmargin (invested heavily in blast processing)
      Tonez (to be fair his first post was a bible quote in some other shitty thread but his heart is with this one)
      fw_rams (only one who 'gets it')
      Yumcheese (still living in 91 before wireless)
      Alexrose (claims to be a physicist)
      cixelsydresol (reads blogs about Minecraft)

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        November 24, 2011 12:28 AM

        comment search is broken.

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          November 24, 2011 12:30 AM

          jujubeads (likes ruining jokes)

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            November 24, 2011 12:31 AM

            sorry. im new here :[

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            November 24, 2011 12:36 AM

            Porkasaurus (first time poster, elitist)

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          November 24, 2011 3:06 AM

          I think there's a workaround for that! Someone posted a link to a site that lists the number of posts of Shackers. When I entered my name I found out it already registered my registration date.

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      November 24, 2011 12:50 AM

      [deleted]

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        November 24, 2011 1:22 AM

        If search weren't broken, I'd link to the post I wrote the last time this came up.

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        November 24, 2011 2:38 AM

        Yep and this "Dell" guy knows very well he could never answer to the questions of those with an in-depth knowledge of gaming graphics techniques, only to the layman who is easily wowed by "unlimited detail!". Meanwhile his videos continues to show models pointing in the same direction without any varying geometry, no collisions, no demonstration of dynamic lighting and no animations.

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        November 24, 2011 3:17 AM

        3D engines can be used for more than just making games, I see much more benefits in medical appliances or architectural simulations.

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          November 24, 2011 5:00 AM

          game applications are pretty specific though. With medical applications you can dismiss many aspects, and with architectural the framerate isn't so important.
          Of course, one for all would be better

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      November 24, 2011 7:13 PM

      A lot of people here saying "But you COULD make a game with that engine!" here. You guys are really missing the point; yes you COULD do it, but the point is that out of what we've seen the problems vastly outweigh the benefits of using their engine. While you may get a good bump in small details compared to traditional polygonal rendering, you will also lose an awful lot. Both dynamic lighting and animation haven't been proven to work (Even if they say they have, they've never demonstrated them), and we have no idea what the size of the data is, as well as suspicions that they're working off an incredibly small data-set with copy/pasted objects everywhere. Destruction is probably impractical with their system as well, as from everything I've read they do a hefty amount of pre-processing which means that the environment both is and will remain static.

      So yes, you could make a game out of what they have, but you'll be working on an unproven technology that's nowhere near as maleable as current systems, which is both expensive and difficult for a single gain that next to no-one will care about at all. Unless you really, really want to look at each individual flat-shaded, non-dynamic grain of dirt.

    • reply
      November 25, 2011 12:29 AM

      Shades of Derek Smart.

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