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Unlimited Detail Technology

category: offtopic [glöplog]
Quote:
Maybe he somehow adapted the google page rank algo to 3d search ?

That'd be hilarious though.
"Here, I rendered your scene."
"But it looks all bugged and wrong!"
"WELL I LIKE IT BETTER THIS WAY SO FUCK YOU."
added on the 2010-03-11 14:10:49 by Gargaj Gargaj
some new vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF8A4bsfKH8
(proving nothing, but still i find it interesting)
added on the 2010-04-12 13:25:17 by toxie toxie
He made it into New Scientist magazine. I threw the magazine in the trash. Fuck this magazine. They asked Doctor Neil Dodgson of Cambridge University about it and his comment was "BOY THIS WOULD TAKE A LOT OF RAM!"
added on the 2010-04-12 13:55:24 by Claw Claw
The attitude is not my liking (or the lousy descriptions in the videos, oh my god, no comments :P), but it's interesting. I'd like to see where this project goes..
added on the 2010-04-12 14:03:43 by Optimus Optimus
Quote:

hm interesting. But what's *that*

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all about?


horus, egypt... material immortality? he's obviously a transhumanist and sees this technique having grander future applications involving the scanning and storage of large amounts of realworld molecular "dartar".

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added on the 2010-04-12 14:52:19 by button button
Have been following this for the last few weeks.

Looks like it's a oct-tree - specifically a sphere tree (sphere tree is exactly the same as a oct-tree - 'cept the data is created with sphere detection and the nodes overlap). With a sphere tree u only need to investigate 2 nodes out of the eight ( because the nodes ovelap). because of the maximum of 2 nodes - u can use a mid point algo' to recurse your nodes (simple adds and shifts to recurse thro the tree).

You can then do a front end hierarchy to extract the data from the sphere tree. The front end is just 1 Ray - that gets cast into the tree and sub divided until it reaches pixel size. U can also exploit the pixel size as a exit check in the tree (i.e. tree node is bigger than pixel ray).


The front end hierarchy massively speeds up the first hit detection - you'll still get cases where ur sub ray has missed a node and has to go back up the tree (this is where I'm stuck at the moment - any thoughts ideas on this?)

A tree node itself is just a 8 node list

e.g:

tree node 0 {0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0}
tree node 1 {1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1}
tree node 2 {0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0}
tree node 3 {2,0,1,0,0,1,0,1}

the tree can be compressed - because the indexes are always 1 less than the nodes index (e.g. tree node 3 will never contain any value above 2 e.t.c) - u can bitfield compress each node based on it's index number. In reality it's even better than this - a tree node say 29 will probably only contain 0,1,4,5 e.t.c. so the compression is pretty good.

I think the colours are stored in a separate table - i.e. a tree node points to a colour table - using it's index and probably some key (recursion depth / world x/y/z) . because it's a hierarchy each node is coloured as the average of it children. this means u get volume mip mapping for free. U can also probably get great DOF for free by modifying the ray distance as it marches thru the tree.
added on the 2010-04-12 15:30:43 by ZJ ZJ
zj: how about animation? The guy put an animation clip up on youtube, but it looks crap and shows an animated object alone, no background.
added on the 2010-04-12 15:59:03 by psonice psonice
Resorting (an object in) the tree for animation won't be really cheap I guess... So maybe it is best suited for static geometry.
added on the 2010-04-12 16:03:47 by raer raer
yeah that's one of the major problems with the tree method - it's all static.

The vid show a spider like creature animated - yup - no background e.t.c. (look close and it looks like it's made from spherical z-Sprites)

I've tracked down all of bruce's posts (bruce dell ceo for UD - he's been working on this for a few years now) - and initially he said the tech' is for backgrounds only - but he changed that stance about a year ago. ( so I guess they've either figured out how to dynamically create the tree - or are using sprite's for animations)

You can make the world non static by rotating the spheres in the tree - i.e. ur ray gets to a specially marked node and gets rotated e.t.c. (havn't tried this - don't know the cost - by I guess it wouldn't be much). The real problem is translation/movement - this massively changes the tree.
added on the 2010-04-12 16:05:01 by ZJ ZJ
I guess it could still rule as a background tech, with polygon/whatever based objects where you need motion.
added on the 2010-04-12 16:26:47 by psonice psonice
Actually I've been working on a similar technology for some time:
http://drastic.net/sarlac/qgi/
added on the 2010-04-12 16:27:29 by sarlac sarlac
haha thats awesome man!! :)
added on the 2010-04-12 16:30:16 by ZJ ZJ
oh yeah I still think it's worthwhile investigating this tech - for static worlds e.t.c. running on mobiles (iphones e.t.c.) could be great. it's not gonna compete with the upper end gpu tech - (crysis / gigavoxels e.t.c).

I think more can be done with the tech also - specifically lighting - u can probably extract SH's really quickly from the tree and do some sort of 1st/2nd bounce global illumination with it.
added on the 2010-04-12 16:37:20 by ZJ ZJ
Interesting.
added on the 2010-04-12 16:41:50 by Optimus Optimus
what i dont get is how some idots are mixing us up with this crap .. :)

this stuff here isnt anything new - and there's plenty of other solutions out there already. the challenges in the area come from a) representing it in a way that works well on a gpu; b) making it animated or working alongside animated stuff properly and with lighting and so on working. doesnt seem like hes solved either.
added on the 2010-04-12 16:44:52 by smash smash
i guess it would be perfect for Myst-like games, a genre that has totally vanished in the 2000s :s
added on the 2010-04-12 16:50:40 by aftu aftu
or the return of Outcast :P
added on the 2010-04-12 16:51:56 by ZJ ZJ
Congrats smash, you made a freaky tech demo!

Safac: quality!
added on the 2010-04-12 16:53:21 by psonice psonice
but smash, didn't you listen to Bruce Dell? The GPU is dead and the manufacturers of GPUs are either blind or frightened by his technology. This is why they haven't returned his calls.

added on the 2010-04-12 17:02:33 by Claw Claw
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(sorry)
added on the 2010-04-12 17:07:44 by aftu aftu
well, they're getting media attention now... http://www.golem.de/1004/74399.html
added on the 2010-04-12 17:31:20 by jua jua
that's not particularly hard these days.
added on the 2010-04-12 17:31:58 by Gargaj Gargaj
yeah BD has been pushing this for the last few years - he's based in brisbane and at first went around the the various games companies there (brisbane used to be the games industry hub in oz - pandemic/krome/thq/creative assembly all within walking distance from each other ). There's a forum post and follow-up when he went to visit THQ - and got picked up on for not knowing what a memory cache was :P

There is lots of hyperbole and misdirection in his statements (as you would expected from any company) - it's not unlimited detail by any stretch - but 1024x600 non polygon rendering is nout to be sneezed at. it has the potential for unlimited rendering detail (meaning it can render extremely detailed objects memory constraining).
If only his examples weren't really bad coder art :P
added on the 2010-04-12 17:40:05 by ZJ ZJ
ZJ: I must see this post \o/
added on the 2010-04-12 18:08:36 by Claw Claw
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=47405

sqrt[-1] is the dood who saw the presentation!

I feel for the guy coz game coders tend to be massive know-it-all wankers (I know coz I'm one :P ) - and esp THQ - not much tech comes from them - they just live from shitty kids IP.
added on the 2010-04-12 18:20:39 by ZJ ZJ

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