Unlimited Detail, Your thoughts.

[anoni]

So, in case no one has heard, there are some nice programmers in Brisbane Australia who claim they have managed to create "unlimited" graphics, that is, infinite detail. The team claim that by converting polygons into atom-like-voxels, you can create an object as smooth and details as an object would be in Real Life. This technology isn't entirely unheard of, but the biggest limitation for this is the fact that to process so many voxels you'll need a LOT of processing power. The team in brisbane claim that they have found a way to get around that, using a search algorithm, they have managed to display only the voxels that are required to display at any one time. For example, the voxels you are not looking at only appear once you look at them, ensuring that the amount of voxels you see at one time is at it's minimum. (The idea is similar to a google search engine)

  Now, let me break this down, the team have claimed that using this system, they can have 100,000 times more converted polygons then any other game ever, in history (so pretty much, 100,000 times more detailed). They showed an Real-Time demo of this, which claimed to have a 1 kilometre squared island with over 100,000 polygons per cubic metre. The following videos might help you understand.

Unlimited Detail Real-Time Rendering Technology Preview 2011 [HD] ~Displaying there real time demo with a quick rap up.
Euclideon & Unlimited Detail - Bruce Dell Interview by John Gatt ~45 minute interview discussing Unlimited detail.


So I ask you, what are your thoughts?
Do you think this is legit, or is it fake?
Do you think that there claims are exaggerating?
Do you think there maybe any technical problems like animation, screen tearing, environmental detection  and dynamic shadows?
Do you think that game companies would be eager to adapt this new technology?

Look foward to hearing from you

[legolyle]

this is darned cool. I'm just hoping its not some gimmick. Because, if there's one thing I hate, it's when people make false claims

I've seen way too much of that in the world of engineering-specifically with things that seem too good to be true.

so, to answer your questions:


1) I would be extremely interested to know the answer to this as well. I'll believe it when I see it.
2) I think they are not exaggerating, but the real question is, will it run on the average high end computer?
3) Honestly don't know enough about real time graphics to answer this, but with any new program/development, comes bugs. always.
4) Eager, eh, they are already making money but if the tech is put out there, and the royalties aren't too high, I can guarantee you the demand would be high.

my 2 cents.

[anoni]

Yeah, according to there claims the software doesn't even use the Graphics card yet (it's all about RAM using there system). The computer they showed the Real Time demo on looked like a decent computer, but nothing too special.

And yeah,  as for the eagerness, I just hope it doesn't follow the same road as Euphoria and DMM followed, where, they were amazing and worked fine, but because they were hard/different to code they were never really adapted into the gaming industry (with the exception of Rockstar using Euphoria). I do certainly hope it's real though, they have shown us real time demos of there software though

[Timmy Fox]

I've heard of this before, but it does seem a bit fake to me unfortunately, or at least just something not as impressive under-the-hood as it sounds like. If it is real it's awesome though.

Possibly it could be done by having more textures and animations which'd result in something similar to a very interactive movie, if you see how I mean, you basically make a regular movie and in one or another way make it into textures and animations so that it will have life-like graphics and more or less a game-like feel to it.

In at least the first video believe I am seeing a slight lag on their models, and I can't really say it looks better than what I've seen from some DX11 demo videos.

It's also possible they use high-quality 3D textures, much like I said before, which is just a few 3-dimentional image files to load and doesn't really move around more than you could manually pan/crop it nor is it very interactive. However it creates the illusion of life-like depth and detail.

Additionally, whilst they might let you create the graphics pixel for pixel, or "atom for atom" and it will compress, or convert, it using as few polygons or what else they use to make it as light as possible but still keep the shapes and details (basically combine all patterns to increase the amount of detail whilst chopping off everything else that otherwise wouldn't make a visible difference to increase efficiency (compare to how the MP3 audio format compresses the data compared to a lossless format).

Note all these ideas seem to connect in one or another way, so it's possible it's something that's using a bit of them all.

And a little note.. in the second video at 2:03 he says that the island is made of twenty one trillion sixty two billion three hundred and fifty two million four hundred and thirty five hundred thousand or 21,062,352,435,000 polygons. Whilst I don't deny this claim it does to me seem like it could just be all made up.

[anoni]

What you are talking about with the textures is known as bump maps or tessellation, if you watch the interview they do state that there is significant difference in what they do and those things. Rather then using shading to make an object appear 3D they do in fact use hundreds of 3D models, they also do a brief comparison and you can in fact see the difference. As for the lag, they state that the demo runs at 20 frames per second (Which is pretty bad for gaming) but they say they are improving there frame rate everyday and are hoping to get at the 30-40 mark (more acceptable). Also, as they said, it doesn't look impressive because those guys are technology designers with next to no art experience. They aren't good artists, so it won't look good, just very detailed. They also haven't got lighting and proper shading implemented yet.

I do understand your doubts, but I'm just claiming what the narrators said, they could be exaggerating, we don't really know.

[spartanb66]

I would say that it is impossible to hold that many "atoms" in a computers ram and render then realtime let alone move them.
I think they found some kind of loophole. As in everything within this area is filled with atoms. Even for the highly detailed elephant,
if you made a polygonal surface and said everything inside it is to be rounded and filled with atoms. The computer could calculate that without much problem.


I will put it like this. You cannot have something be atom for atom. But you can have the computer emulate by saying fill with atoms. Less to think about see?


Or who knows? Maybe they found the quantum binary code!