Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

[Raydeus]

Most people say it's a scam for obvious reasons. But man, I so hope it is true.

[Feba]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

Their island looks like next-gen minecraft.

[DakAttack]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

It wasn't very impressive. Detail is what it is because there are more important uses for resources than perfectly rendering a tree. It could be done better, if they so choose.

[Taskmage]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

Speaking of Minecraft, here's that article from its creator calling the things a scam (Notch on Euclideon: It's a scam | XYDO) and further (Euclideon Creator Swears Infinite Detail is "Not a Hoax" [Euclideon] - Feed The Gamer).

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

It wasn't very impressive. Detail is what it is because there are more important uses for resources than perfectly rendering a tree. It could be done better, if they so choose.

Yeah, plus sometimes angling a rock or turning the same tree model at different angles to create a forest gets the job done on that forest looking and feeling realistic. If you're checking to see if that tree or rock has different moss growth than the others, you have far too much time on your hands.

Plus there are two sides to recycling assets - efficient world-creation and saving money. I'd rather have several trees and a few NPCs looking the same than interiors being cut-and-pasted all over without shame because someone felt the trees needed more detail.

[Armando]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

If you're checking to see if that tree or rock has different moss growth than the others, you have far too much time on your hands.

While this is true, I'm interested in their claim that their technology would allow for easier porting of 3D models across platforms.

Of course I take their claims with a healthy of dose of skepticism, but it'll be interesting if there's some truth to it.

[Taskmage]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

The content creation bottleneck becomes less of an issue as laser scanning becomes more prevalent, as well.

I'm a bit surprised people still have this big of a hard-on for graphics, tbh. It's long been said that increases in graphical fidelity are having diminishing returns on the quality of games, and it becomes more true as time goes by. Not to say nobody should care at all—I'm all for breaking barriers—but how much of this detail would a player even notice? Forget the moss, what good is that individual modeling of grains of dirt?

[Icemage]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

The content creation bottleneck becomes less of an issue as laser scanning becomes more prevalent, as well.

I'm a bit surprised people still have this big of a hard-on for graphics, tbh. It's long been said that increases in graphical fidelity are having diminishing returns on the quality of games, and it becomes more true as time goes by. Not to say nobody should care at all—I'm all for breaking barriers—but how much of this detail would a player even notice? Forget the moss, what good is that individual modeling of grains of dirt?

If anything has been shown in this generation of game consoles (Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, PSP, NDS), it's that raw graphical power doesn't equate to a better experience. Crysis is a lovely game - assuming you can run it at more than 3 frames per second - but it's not a particularly GOOD game. Super Mario Galaxy is at another end of the spectrum, where gameplay and art direction take center stage over graphical power. And then you've got stuff like Minecraft and Angry Birds that says "What are graphics?!"

"In theory" Euclideon's approach can make a lot of sense, but they're definitely glossing over a lot of the problems. The biggest of which is that all that detail requires a hellacious amount of RAM to store it in. Considering the current state of gaming, with a trend more toward consoles and portable devices, memory is one of those resources that is in scarce supply, so any technology of this sort would really only ever work on a PC, where you might reasonably expect 2GB+ of RAM to work with.

Besides, games have to do a lot more than just figure out geometry. Physics collisions, shadows, particle effects, animation, plus making sure there's an actual game to play also figure into your computing budget. I find it dubious that these guys couldn't even be bothered to even put in an "apple falling from a tree" type simulation in their engine.

Also: loldirtwhocares.


Icemage

[Mhurron]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

Also: loldirtwhocares.

Dirt - the new Water

[Raydeus]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

Yeah, the fact that they can waste so many atoms just on dirt really says a lot about this engine (considering if it is indeed real.) Just like water effects did for other engines once upon a time, or physics/lighting for current ones. Not to mention all the tech demos out there making use of completely useless effects just to demonstrate the capabilities of an engine. Just check out the tech demo from an old game like Serious Sam (readily available if you have the game) to see what I'm talking about.

Also, this is a video of an engine still in early development, hence the limited features. Most people never gets to see earlier engine development (which looks like crap) because there's rarely a reason for devs to show it. In this case they are using even that early stage to brag about their engine's capabilities (again, if this is indeed real.)

Either way the use of a tech like this could potentially save a lot of money in the making of assets for a video game while expanding gameplay once poly-counts don't matter anymore. Which could pretty much save HD gaming for obvious reasons.

But it is all speculation at this point, only time will tell if this is true or just a scam/prank. And considering I'm not looking to invest in their company I can definitely afford giving them the benefit of the doubt.

[Taskmage]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

Way to turn that around, seriously. But your level of enthusiasm and extrapolation based on the very limited information so far is positively jenovesque.

[Kailea]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

ma this game has horrible voice acting, poor battle mechanics......terrible story... BUT HOLY CRAP look at that dirt! I am buying 3 more years worth of subscriptions ;p

[Icemage]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

Yeah, the fact that they can waste so many atoms just on dirt really says a lot about this engine (considering if it is indeed real.) Just like water effects did for other engines once upon a time, or physics/lighting for current ones. Not to mention all the tech demos out there making use of completely useless effects just to demonstrate the capabilities of an engine. Just check out the tech demo from an old game like Serious Sam (readily available if you have the game) to see what I'm talking about.

Yes, but see, with other tech demos, you typically see very tangible and practical applications. Modern water effects are crazy good compared to what we had a handful of years ago, to the point where we have games like Hydrophobia which are almost based completely around water simulation.

Destructible environments (Red Faction), advanced physics puzzles (Half Life 2), HDR post-processing (Halo 3), Phong shaders (Team Fortress 2) all stem from various tech demos of the techniques which were eventually refined into usable game mechanics or distinctive art assets because those processes not only advanced the technology, but did so in a way that respected the fact that the game engine had other things to think about than just doing one task.

Also, this is a video of an engine still in early development, hence the limited features. Most people never gets to see earlier engine development (which looks like crap) because there's rarely a reason for devs to show it. In this case they are using even that early stage to brag about their engine's capabilities (again, if this is indeed real.)

I'm actually fairly sure the footage is real - it's too unpolished to be faked, and there's really not much being shown off that is outside the realm of plausibility. I just don't think what's being shown off is either practical nor useful. As these guys say themselves, they're NOT game programmers, and what this tech demo tells me more than anything is that they don't know how modern game engines work.

Games operate on a limited budget of memory and computational power. Euclideon claims that their approach reduces the complexity of computation for rendering, but they DON'T talk about whether their approach reduces the computation required for calculating physics, collisions, shaders, texture application (or even how textures are used, if at all). More importantly, they NEVER talk about how much memory their approach takes; from what I see and my own past experience with game programming, their approach is much more dependent on available memory.

This sort of approach "might" make sense in 10 years (and possibly not even then). It most certainly does not make sense today, with current generation hardware, nor for any hardware on the near horizon.

Either way the use of a tech like this could potentially save a lot of money in the making of assets for a video game while expanding gameplay once poly-counts don't matter anymore. Which could pretty much save HD gaming for obvious reasons.

I don't buy this line of reasoning either. Everything you can do in this tech demo, you can do with sufficiently high polygon models, and they've not made a convincing argument that their "atomic" approach is demonstrably faster or more efficient under real-world gaming environments.


Icemage

[Raydeus]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

Way to turn that around, seriously. But your level of enthusiasm and extrapolation based on the very limited information so far is positively jenovesque.

Why, because I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt? People are closing their minds here before this thing is even proven to be real/false. Either believing it blindly and dismissing it blindly with the same amount of limited information is what seems odd if you ask me.

And really, the possibilities are there should this work as advertised. And if it doesn't then that's that. Like I said, it's not like I'm spending anything waiting to see how this turns out even if I'm hoping it's real.

[Mhurron]

Re: Unlimited Detail (A.K.A. Euclideon is back)

Why, because I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt? People are closing their minds here before this thing is even proven to be real/false.

Simple math says what they say they did isn't what they did. It's smoke and mirrors to separate VC from their money.