Ok, I read a few of the pages and apologize if this has already been mentioned. I first saw this on Kotaku and was impressed, so I looked further into and found their first video which does explain how it achieves this without a supercomputer...

From the description:

Unlimited Detail is a fourth system, which is more like a search algorithm than a 3D engine. It is best explained like this: if you had a word document and you went to the SEARCH tool and typed in a word like MONEY the search tool quickly searches for every place that word appeared in the document. Google and Yahoo are also search engines that go looking for things very quickly. Unlimited Detail is basically a point cloud search algorithm. We can build enormous worlds with huge numbers of points, then compress them down to be very small. The Unlimited Detail engine works out which direction the camera is facing and then searches the data to find only the points it needs to put on the screen it doesnt touch any unneeded points, all it wants is 1024*768 (if that is our resolution) points, one for each pixel of the screen. It has a few tricky things to work out, like: what objects are closest to the camera, what objects cover each other, how big should an object be as it gets further back. But all of this is done by a new sort of method that we call MASS CONNECTED PROCESSING. Mass connected processing is where we have a way of processing masses of data at the same time and then applying the small changes to each part at the end.

From there the only issue I see with this technology is the amount of space one has in the hard drive.

Telcontar

United Kingdom16710 Posts

August 02 2011 05:24 GMT

#225

It seems like an amazing breakthrough but I guess it'll take a good while before we see this in use due to hardware limitations. On the PC platform, it might make an entrance sooner due to the presence of hardcore gamers with their crazy-powerful set-ups, but console gaming will have to wait a good while I feel, unless the big players like Sony, MS and Nintentdo (maybe not nintendo lol) accomodate this technology in their next line of consoles. Also, since most developers are turning to the console platform, I'm not sure how many will want to adopt this so soon.

Nevertheless, it's looking great for the future and I eagerly await the days when this sort of tech is fully in use in the video gaming industry.

illumiel

United States75 Posts

August 02 2011 06:00 GMT

#226

It is physically infeasible to maintain that amount of points (we are talking 4 billions in demo with elephants in pyramids that is 4,000,000,000 * 12 bytes min (probably more, because there is no way they will be able to cram position of a point on that scale into 32 bit variable) = ~48 gigabytes of point data). I think in other demo they talked about 100 billions. They do give us some clues how they do what they do - almost all the objects are the same. They also mention that their algorithm simply applies changes to different objects.

Here is my conjecture of what they are doing - they maintain positions of objects and possibly some planes for those objects. Then they apply geometry based on the formulas for curves. In fact - it is possible because they are not doing real unlimited. They simply use really small coordinate field, and then after some formula magic object appears.

So trick is a really neat lod system. That is knowing which level of detail to compute and then which points to take into picture building.

There are limitations. Primary one is physics. They can render dirt grains, but they will not be able to remember how they move due to interaction with the player (assuming that cannot be precomputed and put into some kind of fixed formula). It is possible to work around that by remembering positions of explosions/footsteps/fallen objects and then recompute geometry based on that.

Second one is hardware support. Reason polygons are so entrenched because video cards had been optimized to use them for decades. This means that there will be quite a bit of momentum to overcome to get hardware support for this technology.

This is may be major upgrade to polygon technology, but not as versatile as ray tracing (They offered no way of doing complex reflections with their method). Also with tessellation in DX 11, they are a few years too late to really make impact they were looking for.

All that said I am looking towards games produced with that technology. Hopefully they can adapt nVidia CUDA/ ATI Stream to provide at least some hardware acceleration for their SDK.

Xevious

United States2086 Posts

August 02 2011 06:04 GMT

#227

Honestly what matters more to me than the texture resolutions themselves is the particle quantity, I cringe when I zoom into an object and see a rough edge. Anti-aliasing can only do so much, so I'm naturally very excited for this ^_^

udgnim

United States8024 Posts

August 02 2011 06:07 GMT

#228

future already came with Crysis 1 + mods except the gaming industry is mostly set up around the console market nowadays

RogerX

New Zealand3180 Posts

August 02 2011 06:14 GMT

#229

Wow... I cant believe they used atoms instead of polygons. When I first hear him say that I was blown out of my mind... Like, wow... Shit.. Wow lol.

nihlon

Sweden5581 Posts

August 02 2011 06:22 GMT

#230

Wouldn't it be possible to combine this (assuming it works) with traditional programming in games? Seems like some people are way to focused on the demo.

NeverMore9

13 Posts

August 02 2011 06:28 GMT

#231

better graphics means i gotta spend more on my comp, so i hope the graphics get better, but at a steady rate or else i gotta get more jobs loll.

Burned Toast

Canada2040 Posts

August 02 2011 06:33 GMT

#232

All this energy, time and money could have been spent on gameplay... Gosh, i miss the nineties and good 2d games so much.

dignity

Canada908 Posts

August 02 2011 06:54 GMT

#233

You have to realize that these are not the same guys who would be working on gameplay. The fact that they are working on graphics for a game does not instantly make them the designers behind a game.

Swwww

Switzerland812 Posts

August 02 2011 07:00 GMT

#234

Looks pretty beast to be honest - hope it can be integrated somehow!

Release

United States4397 Posts

August 02 2011 07:17 GMT

#235

The graphics hardware required to run this at acceptable frame rates will cost thousands of dollars. Average consumers who spend a few hundred won't utilize this.

Destro

Netherlands1206 Posts

August 02 2011 07:31 GMT

#236

never trust anything thats prerendered. I call bs on this one... (visual effects artist, 10+ years experience in games and film)

making pretty pre-rendered fly throughs is one thing, but this has shown 0 application in the game industry.
they havent even touched things like, animation, dynamic lighting, physics, shaders, etc.

their "new and improved" lighting is just a rendered ambient occlusion still which i could render out in about 20 seconds with my eyes closed... they may be on to something.. but future of game development? absolutely not.

Ownos

United States2147 Posts

August 02 2011 08:03 GMT

#237

I'm going to have call BS on this. One thing that annoys me to no end is the tech industry's need to frequently come up with buzz words for slightly different things or the same things. Like... cloud computing. Things you do on the Internet is now called cloud computing. Things like uploading a picture. For any old schoolers: blast processing? LOLOLOL Posting messages onto to twitter gets it own little cute name: tweeting.

Polygons are nothing more than sets of points in the computer. What it seems like they're describing having many, many, many points... basically came up with a buzz word for high-poly counts... lol "atoms"

The demo doesn't even look as good as the best CG in movies...

Ciraxis

Australia400 Posts

August 02 2011 08:12 GMT

#238

This looks really cool. Really wonder what'll happen to the video game industry/market/target audience. This might also overwhelm the RTS genre - the FPS genre might appear too advanced for everything else.

Burned Toast

Canada2040 Posts

August 02 2011 08:18 GMT

#239

On August 02 2011 15:54 dignity wrote:
You have to realize that these are not the same guys who would be working on gameplay. The fact that they are working on graphics for a game does not instantly make them the designers behind a game.

The guy that work on the gameplay is probably the same that answer the phone from what I see from the games made in the last 5 years...