Insane Physics Engine Will Blow Your Mind With Dirt
- Thread starter John Funk
- Start date
Computer technology isn't improving nearly as fast as it was 15 years ago (I also wouldn't call 15 years "relatively soon" for the video game industry). Something like this may require a major technological leap, such as moving beyond silicon.Erana said:
Wow. That's one hell of a good start. Get this to run realtime and then add Euphoria and you have a platform to make a beautifully realistic game.
Most of that stuff is probably in real time, in terms of simulation. The rendering might have taken a while though. That was all done in Softimage, and it seems reasonably easy to use. However since it's using Softimage I suspect it uses ICE, which may not necessarily useful for games necessarily. But hopefully it doesn't run off ICE and can be used in any platform. Still, good to see something besides HAVOC for a change.
Shoot someone with a "GEL Gun". They turn to gel and melt.
Imagine the FATALITY's!
Oh and boobs with now wiggle with such precision that teenagers will never again leave the house.
Imagine the FATALITY's!
Oh and boobs with now wiggle with such precision that teenagers will never again leave the house.
CLOTH PHYSICS!!!! Really, we need those to improve quite a bit as the biggest issues with heavy rain's graphics was when people took their shirts off the shirt stopped making sense.
Wow, imagine a game where the enemies turn to dust when you kill them.
And those cloth physics were unbelievable. Shame my laptop can barely run flash games at a decent FPS.
And those cloth physics were unbelievable. Shame my laptop can barely run flash games at a decent FPS.
In terms of speeding up individual cores/threads/processes, that's true, but for highly parallel stuff, which physics processing of this sort very much so is, things are advancing very quickly, particularly for more specialized processors. Modern video cards are absurdly fast at doing certain specific things, including simulations like this, and they continue to get even more so in a hurry. The problem is that programming for them is currently a huge pain in the ass, not a lot of stuff is standardized or consistent between systems, most people don't have new/fancy enough hardware to take advantage of it (which is why physics engines are generally just used to make stuff pretty and not for anything required for gameplay), and it cuts into your video rendering power if you're not doing it on a separate card. If that all gets sorted out, any remaining problems certainly won't be because of a lack of tech advancing quickly enough, at least in this particular area at the moment.BloodSquirrel said:
Looks really nice, although I very much doubt that this will be used in computer games.
Unless you want the infamous "Crysis" situation from a few years ago, times one thousand.
Unless you want the infamous "Crysis" situation from a few years ago, times one thousand.
"When you get down to it, physics engines are really just a way to make the things that don't matter in a game look extra pretty. Unless you're the kind of gamer who actively looks for it, you're not going to be paying attention to the realistic way the curtains waft in the breeze while you dive through them firing madly at your enemies."
Did you... did you really just say that? Because this is the first physics engine I've seen that has the potential for truly destructible terrain (Red Faction tries, but it's not there). Like, I just dug my own foxhole. I cut a small hole in this wall and spied on you. I knocked down the building you were in by carefully placing grenades. Sure, some games have SIMULATIONS of this happening (it's your mission to place these grenades under the supports of that building), and some games have limited destructible terrain (shoot that wall and some of it MAGICALLY DISAPPEARS), but this kind of physics engine allows you to take down buildings not because it's specifically programmed into the game for you to take down that building, but BECAUSE YOU WANT TO.
Pirate games got a whole lot more interesting, too. Your ship does not have hit points: your ship is a ship. BANG! Now there's a hole in it. Depending on where that hole is (below waterline? Uh oh...), you could have a major problem on your hands, or it could be merely cosmetic.
Just using the curtain examples, think about stealth gameplay. You're in the dictator's office, looking for evidence of nefarious activities. Suddenly, you hear a key in the door. Do you press a button and enter "stealth mode"? Do you walk THROUGH some curtains and be instantly hid? No. You push aside the curtains as quickly as you can and get behind them. Unfortunately, you're a bit too wide for the space, and your outline is faintly visible through the curtains. Hope they don't notice. This would be amazing in multiplayer, since the other person would have to actually be paying attention to notice you there (instead of the computational equivalent of a spot check for an NPC).
Did you... did you really just say that? Because this is the first physics engine I've seen that has the potential for truly destructible terrain (Red Faction tries, but it's not there). Like, I just dug my own foxhole. I cut a small hole in this wall and spied on you. I knocked down the building you were in by carefully placing grenades. Sure, some games have SIMULATIONS of this happening (it's your mission to place these grenades under the supports of that building), and some games have limited destructible terrain (shoot that wall and some of it MAGICALLY DISAPPEARS), but this kind of physics engine allows you to take down buildings not because it's specifically programmed into the game for you to take down that building, but BECAUSE YOU WANT TO.
Pirate games got a whole lot more interesting, too. Your ship does not have hit points: your ship is a ship. BANG! Now there's a hole in it. Depending on where that hole is (below waterline? Uh oh...), you could have a major problem on your hands, or it could be merely cosmetic.
Just using the curtain examples, think about stealth gameplay. You're in the dictator's office, looking for evidence of nefarious activities. Suddenly, you hear a key in the door. Do you press a button and enter "stealth mode"? Do you walk THROUGH some curtains and be instantly hid? No. You push aside the curtains as quickly as you can and get behind them. Unfortunately, you're a bit too wide for the space, and your outline is faintly visible through the curtains. Hope they don't notice. This would be amazing in multiplayer, since the other person would have to actually be paying attention to notice you there (instead of the computational equivalent of a spot check for an NPC).
Well that was certainly impressive and realistic but I still have one question ringing in the back of my head.
Will this be implemented in a way that actually makes me care?
I find it hard to be excited by physics engines because, quite simply, as a player they do little or nothing to actually improve the game for me.
I can hardly even call a change like this that 'groundbreaking'. By now we've gotten about as far as we can with graphics and realistic visuals in games (now almost every game that comes out these days boasts to have 'hyper realistic HD visuals') to the point where any futher progress in this feild feels somewhat trivial and pointless.
Compare this to when we first jumped to 3D, that was a huge and revolutionary, we had quite literally never seen anything like that before in a game (oddly enough, back then we called that 'hyper realistic' too).
It's kinda like when we switched over from VHS to DVD, that actually made a clear improvement and progression. This is kinda like when we tried moving from DVD to BluRay, sure, it looks kinda nice...but the changes are asthetic at best.
Will this be implemented in a way that actually makes me care?
I find it hard to be excited by physics engines because, quite simply, as a player they do little or nothing to actually improve the game for me.
I can hardly even call a change like this that 'groundbreaking'. By now we've gotten about as far as we can with graphics and realistic visuals in games (now almost every game that comes out these days boasts to have 'hyper realistic HD visuals') to the point where any futher progress in this feild feels somewhat trivial and pointless.
Compare this to when we first jumped to 3D, that was a huge and revolutionary, we had quite literally never seen anything like that before in a game (oddly enough, back then we called that 'hyper realistic' too).
It's kinda like when we switched over from VHS to DVD, that actually made a clear improvement and progression. This is kinda like when we tried moving from DVD to BluRay, sure, it looks kinda nice...but the changes are asthetic at best.
I suspect this will initially only be used for cutscene rendering - allowing smooth transition from engine-graphics to cutscene-graphics. Also, it'll massively speed up the time it takes to render cloth, fabric, hair, and other fussy materials that usually need to be hand-tweaked, frame by frame, to look natural.
I strongly suspect we will see it in games within the next half-decade; that or Havok/Physx/DMM [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Molecular_Matter] will quickly rise to meet Lagoa's challenge.
I think the bunny is their logo, as the name is Lagoa, like Lagomorpha [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagomorpha].
I strongly suspect we will see it in games within the next half-decade; that or Havok/Physx/DMM [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Molecular_Matter] will quickly rise to meet Lagoa's challenge.
I think the bunny is their logo, as the name is Lagoa, like Lagomorpha [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagomorpha].