New Rendering Method Claims Unlimited Detail, Kills Polygons

[Ciro]

O_o wow... this is insane! I'd never think that technology could go so far! O_O

[Jake]

O_o wow... this is insane! I'd never think that technology could go so far! O_O

This is the tip of the iceberg.

[yottabyte]

More videos up, in two parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THaam5mwIR8&feature=channel

[ARTgames]

I cant what till the api comes out and i just put a infinite loop making exponential growth of points and leave it running on my 5 year old pc. Hey i can have unlimited. I have a feeling this is all going to turn out to be some big joke or something.

But hey. making big clams like these seems like the quickest way to get a tun of press fast. They got me to post it here. :P

[DarkBlade325]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-ATtrImCx4&ttl=1

I think he making some really big clams.

Mmm..Clams.

[ARTgames]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-ATtrImCx4&ttl=1

I think he making some really big clams.

Mmm..Clams.

no no

a BIG clam.


But yes i did forget an i in claim.

[Lingus]

Actually I believe the way WoW works is like normal 3D but it only loads the part of the map in your general area. Also, this method does not use polygons at all. It's point cloud based.

No no, I understand that. I just meant the idea behind only loading what you need to see at that point in time.

The difference is that in WoW you're loading things you can't see. It's based on distance versus actual line of sight.

Though after reading more into this and the other methods of 3D graphics I do agree that what I mentioned is not anything new. It's called ray tracing.

wo, wo! hold on there. ray tracing is something really different from what we use today and what this guy thech he using. ray tracing is really slow and is the calculating of the physics of light as it bounces off objects. Light as you know can bounce off a lot of things before it hits your eyes and can change colors when doing so. even things not in your field of view. Real time full ray tracing is like the holy grail of computer graphics. One day we will get there (i hope).

You have the right idea just not the right terminology.

From what I can tell, this method is similar to ray tracing in every way you mentioned. It's not the same obviously, but it uses the same concept. In this method, they also have to account for lighting, so I don't see how that's any different. Apparently they are using a different method than ray tracing which makes it way faster. I understand ray tracing is not the same as this, but my point was that what I had initially claimed was the main feature of this method was actually just ray tracing.

[ARTgames]

Actually I believe the way WoW works is like normal 3D but it only loads the part of the map in your general area. Also, this method does not use polygons at all. It's point cloud based.

No no, I understand that. I just meant the idea behind only loading what you need to see at that point in time.

The difference is that in WoW you're loading things you can't see. It's based on distance versus actual line of sight.

Though after reading more into this and the other methods of 3D graphics I do agree that what I mentioned is not anything new. It's called ray tracing.

wo, wo! hold on there. ray tracing is something really different from what we use today and what this guy thech he using. ray tracing is really slow and is the calculating of the physics of light as it bounces off objects. Light as you know can bounce off a lot of things before it hits your eyes and can change colors when doing so. even things not in your field of view. Real time full ray tracing is like the holy grail of computer graphics. One day we will get there (i hope).

You have the right idea just not the right terminology.

From what I can tell, this method is similar to ray tracing in every way you mentioned. It's not the same obviously, but it uses the same concept. In this method, they also have to account for lighting, so I don't see how that's any different. Apparently they are using a different method than ray tracing which makes it way faster. I understand ray tracing is not the same as this, but my point was that what I had initially claimed was the main feature of this method was actually just ray tracing.

Its not as similar as you say it is. They almost have nothing in commend accept that they are for visuals. This way Unlimited Detail is doing it does not even take into a count of light to start with. He scans what you can see then applies affects like textures and lighting to it. Thats why he claims its so efficient. But this concept is no ware near ray tracing.

His way tries to account for drawling what the user able to see like this:

Only things in his FOV is computed.

Ray tracing takes into account the whole world the light lives in and follows the life of it till its adsorbed or hits the bounces or distance limit. like this:

As you see at no point is the physics of lights computed in UD. So how you see they are the same or use the same concept please explain how.

Who even knows how Unlimited Detail performs light or textures etc. They give such little info.

They even said this is not ray tracing of any sort but a whole new way of doing things.

nlimited Details method is very different to any 3D method that has been invented so far. The three current systems used in 3D graphics are Ray tracing polygons and point cloud/voxels, they  all have strengths and weaknesses. Polygons runs fast but has poor geometry, Ray-trace and voxels have perfect geometry but run very slowly. Unlimited Detail is a fourth system, which is more like a search algorithm than a 3D engine.

[Lingus]

I dunno. I guess I misunderstood what ray tracing was about. If it is how you explained then I see how they are totally different. I just thought ray tracing did something similar where it only traced the light that would be visible by the camera.

In UD, it has to account for light in some way. I would imagine it would just be more indirect than the method ray tracing uses.

[ARTgames]

I dunno. I guess I misunderstood what ray tracing was about. If it is how you explained then I see how they are totally different. I just thought ray tracing did something similar where it only traced the light that would be visible by the camera.

In UD, it has to account for light in some way. I would imagine it would just be more indirect than the method ray tracing uses.

i see, and its hard to tell about them as of now. we need more info!

[Chaos]

Okay, well, the way I understand this is, they go and create their entire world using their 'dots'.  The data for this world is in the program.  Now, a computer has a specific resolution.  It can only show so many pixels on the screen at any given time.  For example, mine is 1680x1050, so that would literally be 1,764,000 pixels that it needs to display on the screen.  If what I understand is correct, it's essentially doing something similar to a 'google search', and searching for the proper 'dot', or pixel, rather, to show, and then display those 1,764,000 pixels to the screen.  Theoretically, this should be fairly quick, because it doesn't have to actually real-time render anything.  The real question in my mind, at this point, is whether it can find and pull 1,764,000 pixels and display them in 1/60th of a second (60 fps). 

[ARTgames]

yes chaos you have the idea.

[Jake]

I'm a little confused as to how they search for these points of data. Wouldn't large amounts of geography still need to be stored in memory? I really have no clue how this works 0_o.

[ARTgames]

I'm a little confused as to how they search for these points of data. Wouldn't large amounts of geography still need to be stored in memory? I really have no clue how this works 0_o.

same here. i don't get how the points forum a surface.  maybe they have some sort of vector between these points.

i also agree with "Wouldn't large amounts of geography still need to be stored in memory? "

[Jake]

I'm a little confused as to how they search for these points of data. Wouldn't large amounts of geography still need to be stored in memory? I really have no clue how this works 0_o.

same here. i don't get how the points forum a surface.

I believe I understand that part of it to an extent. If you find the point needed for every pixel on the screen, they will combine to look like a surface.

i also agree with "Wouldn't large amounts of geography still need to be stored in memory? "

Hopefully someone can shed some light on this.