Graphics = getting much better.

[ThePointingMan]

Just... WOW. They have found a way to make them polygons, more like atoms. Pay close attention to when it zooms into the dirt, just how crazy it is. The ability to scan in objects will probably help a LOT too.

[Vy'drach]

Saw this on ponychan, and it seemed interesting. I can't wait to see what guns will be like with it. I can't wait to see some 3D scanned guns, as opposed to hand-modeled ones that don't look quite right. Also, no more sticker decals on the sides, engraving will be engraving.

[Xortberg]

Welp, I'm impressed.

[Thu'um]

i don't realy care, but its neat

[Deploy]

There's gonna be a time when graphics get too good...

[King of the Shrooms]

ooo the prices games will be once that happins

[Deploy]

ooo the prices games will be once that happins

The let's hope it doesn't happen.

[FoxMcCloud]

Saw this on Reddit today. This is going to be very interesting they said within several months they will be releasing their SDK out to developers.

.

[Ray]

..impressive

[Psygonis]

Is that based on voxels instead of pixels, to render the atomic properties of "particles of graphics"?

[Sabre]

I'll believe it when you see it applied to something. Also, I was under the impression that the main thing holding back graphics atm was lighting and animation.

As for the price of games, I don't think it will have much of an effect as much of this stuff will likely be stock so you can same photo realistic dirt will be used in most games. Also tools will get better, and art styles will change. The 'price of games' argument has been around since games when 3D. 3D games were going to be to expencive, then PS1, PS2, PS3, and now this. Much like films, there is room for the safe AAA blockbusters, and the indie game made by 3 blokes in a garage.

[Redeemer]

This is amazing. A great step forward, I'm very impressed.

But.

How will this reflect upon the price of games and future consoles? I really don't think they'll simply carry on the usual price schemes as normal.

[Sabre]

This is amazing. A great step forward, I'm very impressed.

But.

How will this reflect upon the price of games and future consoles? I really don't think they'll simply carry on the usual price schemes as normal.

I already covered that. That is something that has been said ever since games went 3D, never panned out, at least not to the level that means games will die. Also, given it sometimes takes time and effort to make things optimized, something that in theory won't be a problem.

Here's some news.

1- I never noticed this, but they never showed anything moving.

2- They never mentioned the storage size, which would apparently be huge.

3- You can already play a game made with similar tech here. http://voxelstein3d.sourceforge.net/

4- Graphics cards don't recognise this method of rendering. The reason it's used in science is because it's more accurate, not because of the graphics looking nice.

5- People who know alot more about this stuff than me claim it's alot of hype and no substance.

6- Said people claim it's not going to be the giant leap is claimed, rather it will be incremental at best.

[Psygonis]

[...]

1- I never noticed this, but they never showed anything moving.

2- They never mentioned the storage size, which would apparently be huge.

3- You can already play a game made with similar tech here. http://voxelstein3d.sourceforge.net9..0./

[...]

That's a point yeah, and if it takes a whole different way to animate things using that tech, there are chances that it will be quite long for it to actually be used at industrial scale.

Concerning space, I do believe 2 approaches are possible. Either "scanned" thing with low processing but high disk space, or "generative", with low disk space but tremendously high CPU usage.

[Sabre]

That's a point yeah, and if it takes a whole different way to animate things using that tech, there are chances that it will be quite long for it to actually be used at industrial scale.

Concerning space, I do believe 2 approaches are possible. Either "scanned" thing with low processing but high disk space, or "generative", with low disk space but tremendously high CPU usage.

I think I'm in love. Ever play the FPS that is 96kb? All the textures are generated, so whiles a tiny tiny game, the load times are looong.

http://www.theprodukkt.com/kkrieger#22

[psy_commando]

Voxels are old news, there are reasons why it wasn't adopted for gaming.

Besides, video cards on the market now, and for several years, are physically made to calculate 3D triangles(where each points of the triangles are called vertex), and then flatten them into a 2d image made of pixels, and paint their textures on. Pixel shaders and vertex shaders are processed at that time.

So I guess that's why they're running it in software mode, it means that it use only the processor, since the video card isn't made to calculate voxels. Even worst, since voxels or pixels themselves don't hold information on their position, they have to be stored in a data structure. Pixels are stored in a table with H rows and W columns. But Voxels are stored in a 3D data structure( Height x Width x Depth ).

I don't really know how a voxel engine works, but having worked with current technology, this brings tons of questions, and concerns. Like how are you supposed to animate voxels efficiently, I'd guess they'd use multiple "frames" of the object in different positions, like with animated sprites, but it would take quite a lot of memory. And all the vertex, and geometry based techniques would be useless, since there aren't any.

I really wonder, how this will turn out. But I'm still pretty skeptical.

[Psygonis]

The solution for this would be to use dedicated chipsets using highly pipelined custom cores. ASIC chips, such as FPGA could fulfill that role very well, but that would imply to reprogram it (using a local codecs library or by downloading them on demand) each time you need a new kind of dedicated operation.

[Sabre]

They might be old news, but they might be worth revisiting with the benifits of new tech. Also just limiting yourself to the one, same approach will only get you so far.

As for the lack of hardware, that's normal. Graphics, and later phyisics were all software, but eventually became hardware. So that's a not a problem.

Scepticism is good in all things.

I can see this tech having potential not as a stand alone solution, but rather something to used along side other stuff. If we assume the demo is real, then what this would be good at is drawing lots of stationary items in great detail. Beaches for example, or things made of stone where gunfire can chip away at them. These things wouldn't need to move, but can be deformed and will look good even at great distances. I don't know if that is technically possible to combine it with exsisting tech in such a way.

[LoneWolf]

I'm really not impressed with the demo. They just didn't really demo it in a real-gaming application. There's almost no light shaders, and their environment was extremely dull. The texturing was also pretty bad. And don't even get me started on their water. Sure, you can have millions of polygons, but without the other elements, the graphics in this demo are terrible. I'll be impressed when they actually apply it into a properly lighted, textured, physics integrated, high resolution modeled environment. Also, if the software isn't optimized, then nobody's going to be able to run it on current-generation hardware anyways.

Also, who gives a shit about graphics, I just want good gameplay. A game doesn't have to just be shiny, it also has to be fun and creative to score marks with me.

[Psygonis]

Is that thread about better games? No, we're only dealing with graphics.

Mixed tech seem a bit tricky, because elements need to interact with eachother. So you'd need a higher layer of container, or a comprehensive interface between pixel-based and voxel based elements.

There is no shading, mapping, advanced texturing in the demo for that reason. 3D processing is highly hardware-oriented, and the demo is likely made using a software-only framework. But these things can be developed, on separated chipsets/cards for instance.

[Sabre]

Also, despite what indie devs tell you, better graphics do mean better gameplay. True, it's not the only factor, but it does limit design. Dead Rising and Halo 3 has so many enemies and effects going on at once because of graphics. Couldn't do that on PS2 unless they were all just blocks.

Let's look at Silent Hill. The fog and darkness was included because they couldn't draw very far due to hardware limitations. In later games, the fog became rolling fog, monsters got more icky and shadows added to the atmosphere. I did a video review of FEAR back in the day. As I mentioned in that, it was scary played on Max Graphics, when I played the expansion on my mams laptop, it wasn't scary at all because there was no shadows for things to hide in, and zombies appeared to be less flesh, and more wheatabix.

That's just a few examples of graphics making gameplay better. Then there's things like Tesilation (however it's spelt) that not only makes games look better, but makes them easier and cheaper to make. Megatextures allow a more organic feeling world and making easier to make.

[Guest Mr. Nintendo]

I'm sort-of impressed with the demo. I could see Nintendo and a few other companies go for advanced technology graphics.

Right now, I can't say what game would use those nice textures other than Half-Life 2: Episode 3 or Half-Life 3.

[ThePointingMan]

I'm really not impressed with the demo. They just didn't really demo it in a real-gaming application. There's almost no light shaders, and their environment was extremely dull. The texturing was also pretty bad. And don't even get me started on their water. Sure, you can have millions of polygons, but without the other elements, the graphics in this demo are terrible. I'll be impressed when they actually apply it into a properly lighted, textured, physics integrated, high resolution modeled environment. Also, if the software isn't optimized, then nobody's going to be able to run it on current-generation hardware anyways.

Also, who gives a shit about graphics, I just want good gameplay. A game doesn't have to just be shiny, it also has to be fun and creative to score marks with me.

They specifically said that all them things where gonna be kinda crappy because they are not an art team, just a tech team, therefor world = dull, textures = bad, Tech = CRAZY! The demo showed some very impressive tech, which would make the art team able to make very very cool things, making all those things you said not look bad. To be able to run that world in real time rendering is crazy! The shading and textures and all that have nothing to do with what this video is showing, just the fact that there is like... unlimited little atom thingy's. Also, agreeing with sabre about the graphics. They don't make the gameplay, but they can make it more fun/ make more things possible.

[LoneWolf]

Well, yes, Sabre has a point. If graphics are used right, they can improve gameplay. And I also suppose that Psygonis is right, and this is only a discussion of graphics. I've never been one to go gawking over graphics though.

And yes, I realize that the demo was only that, a demo, but until it's used in conjunction with other aspects, I won't be impressed. My issue with this is going to be how the new unlimeted-detail technology integrates with current software and physics models. If you have to build whole new shaders for the new tech, then current gaming companies are probably going to ignore the stuff to save development time.

Pretty much what I'm trying to say is that current technologies, both hardware and software, can't really deal with this right now, and as such, I'm not going to be impressed until full integration, or at least a better demo. That's not to say that I'm not impressed, but I just won't be completely blown away until I see how the industry uses this new technology.

[Deploy]

Also, despite what indie devs tell you, better graphics do mean better gameplay.

Bullcrap.

The "race for the best graphics EVER" thing is one of my least favorite things about gaming. Better graphics is good, but it shouldn't such a HUGE focus as it is IMO.

And some things in this video honestly didn't look any better than what we have now.

Art style is 100x more important to me than graphics quality. IMO a game like Dynamite Headdy looks MUCH better than, say, Crysis 2.