Insane Physics Engine Will Blow Your Mind With Dirt

[Ancientgamer]

It's possible the physics engine will be adapted for videogames, in fact it probably will. What needs to be realized though is that the reason this looks so damn pretty is because it's rendered with some advanced illumination techniques: some sort of raytracing most likely. And that's something that can't currently be done on commercial hardware.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

First off, the move toward highly parallel stuff is a result of the inability to push individual cores much further. We can't make cores faster anymore, so we're just piling more on.

Second off, graphics card advancement has been acheived in large part by sheer size, power consumption, and resistor count. Modern graphics cards are enormous and suck up more power than the processor. Also, you're supposed to have two of them now if you really want to be high end. This isn't a sustainable form of advancement.

The problem here is the basic techonology: we only have so many die shrinks left in us, and they're getting harder and harder. Parallel processing advances by adding more cores, which either requires a larger, hotter chip or a die shrink.

Yes, it's definitely true that it's harder and harder to fit more transistors into smaller spaces, and unless the laws of physics change, some entirely different approach is going to be needed eventually. However, there's a lot of stuff that can be done faster than it currently is without just throwing "bigger and hotter" at it. Crappy, on-board, integrated video chipsets can decode HD video using a tiny fraction of the power a general-purpose CPU takes to do the same thing. My video card uses less power than my CPU does, but for the specialized things that it's good for, it's orders of magnitude faster.

There's always stuff that can't be parallelized and that won't work well (or even at all) without a general-purpose processor of some sort, but a lot of the most complex and time-consuming things done in games are pretty well-suited for that sort of offloading and wouldn't require some 800W behemoth of a card to do it, either. Coming up with more accurate simulations that can still be run in real time will keep the math/physics/CS nerds busy, too. There's still plenty of progress being made on that end of things, too. Sure, it's hard, and we won't just magically get improvements "for free" indefinitely, but I'm not too worried yet with what I've seen.

 

[soren7550]

I have a hard time believing even half of this will work in a game (now a days and the near future anyway).

 

[JeanLuc761]

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. This is kinda like when we tried moving from DVD to BluRay, sure, it looks kinda nice...but the changes are asthetic at best.

Gonna just dispute a few of your points here.
1. I mostly agree with you in that most games don't use physics for the benefit of the gameplay. Half-Life 2 is one of the rare gems to use physics in a responsible manner, rather than just looking pretty. The idea has potential, but needs proper implementation.

2) We are still incredibly far from true photorealism in videogames (though Uncharted 2 and Crysis are starting to get right up there.) We still need to get past the uncanny valley in the vast majority of titles, textures need to be much higher resolution, we need much more varied and complex material shaders (blurred reflections, to name one), and we need higher res models. Games today look great, but they're far from their potential.

3) Personally, I'm always stunned when people say they can't see a major difference between DVD and Blu-ray. Avatar is the most definitive title to compare (night and day difference, seriously), but if you have a good set-up, you're looking at image quality that is about 2-3x higher detail/fidelity than what is possible on DVD.

 

[Uberjoe19]

3) Personally, I'm always stunned when people say they can't see a major difference between DVD and Blu-ray. Avatar is the most definitive title to compare (night and day difference, seriously), but if you have a good set-up, you're looking at image quality that is about 2-3x higher detail/fidelity than what is possible on DVD.

I'd like to disagree on that third point. My vision is shit, even with glasses, and thus I cannot tell the difference between DVD and Blu-ray unless I'm less than a foot away from the television.

 

[JeanLuc761]

3) Personally, I'm always stunned when people say they can't see a major difference between DVD and Blu-ray. Avatar is the most definitive title to compare (night and day difference, seriously), but if you have a good set-up, you're looking at image quality that is about 2-3x higher detail/fidelity than what is possible on DVD.

I'd like to disagree on that third point. My vision is shit, even with glasses, and thus I cannot tell the difference between DVD and Blu-ray unless I'm less than a foot away from the television.

Fair enough but I'd say that's more of a problem with your glasses rather than a fault with the Blu-ray hardware

 

[Disaster Button]

I need a Dawn of War game to use this engine.

 

[superbatranger]

That was amazing.
Seriously, get to stream-lining that code and put that in games. Right now.
The dirt alone was just epic. Can you imagine a beach-storming level where the dirt is flying, craters are being formed realistically with clumps whizzing past your face? Sweet merciful cheese on a stick in an oven...sign me up.

I just imagined that. It was....beautiful, to say the least. If they added this engine to the one Crysis 2 is running, no one would be able to play it, because there wouldn't be a computer able enough to handle the awesome. I never knew dirt could be so pretty.

 

[Alusin86]

It would be certainly interesting to see this engine in a physics based puzzle game, if this were implemented in an fps or a game with Crysis graphics requirement, not so much.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I just had a Nerdgasm. Make it work like this in real time and I will be in love.

 

[Uberjoe19]

3) Personally, I'm always stunned when people say they can't see a major difference between DVD and Blu-ray. Avatar is the most definitive title to compare (night and day difference, seriously), but if you have a good set-up, you're looking at image quality that is about 2-3x higher detail/fidelity than what is possible on DVD.

I'd like to disagree on that third point. My vision is shit, even with glasses, and thus I cannot tell the difference between DVD and Blu-ray unless I'm less than a foot away from the television.

Fair enough but I'd say that's more of a problem with your glasses rather than a fault with the Blu-ray hardware

The main reason my prescription isn't exactly what it should be is the fact I hate getting my eyes dilated.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

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.

Advanced physics certainly isn't for every game. I could see something like this physics engine being absolutely spectacular if it was implemented into a Half Life or Metroid Prime game though. Those are the kinds of games were you have enough mellow periods that you can actually look around and notice stuff like that and really drink-in the atmosphere. Meanwhile games like Gears of War and Team Fortress can easily ignore those physics and just focus on being fun shooters.

Either way, really cool video. You almost do a double-take at the beginning to realize that you're actually looking at rendered dirt instead of them just recording themselves dropping dirt in a glass container. I think the coolest effect though was when they had the cloth getting pulled down over objects.

Wait, I just had a thought: Fallout 3 using this physics engine. I think I just peed a little.

 

[DTWolfwood]

they need to use this in movies! i've been waiting to see realistic fabric and hair in CG Movies for like forever! we are one step closer to photo-realism in CG \o\ /o/

 

[airwolfe591]

I think this would be used, at first, to make CG movies a lot easier to produce, but after a few years, would be developed to be used in games or something. I could see this easily becoming the next standard in video game physics, because it annoys the hell out of me to see unmovable clothing and such.

Though It could come sooner because it would be one engine (I think) handling all the physics. Water, clothing and other environmental things. I'd love to see this implemented in an RPG like Elder Scrolls, I could finally become a Lumberjack!

 

[BoogieManFL]

Seeings things like this makes me excited to think about the games we'll see in the next 10-20 years. They are going to be awesome with how technology and techniques are evolving.

 

[Dr.Sean]

I'd need to wire fifty PS3s together to even run that shit at 1 frame per second.

 

[Faulty Turmoil]

I think we've found the engine for Crysis 3 everyone. With updated graphics, that game would make a super computer explode.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Amazing. While you're right that it's mostly used just to make pretty games look more pretty. Some games could actually have some use for it. Maybe when Little Big Planet 3 comes out, they might use this, and then some creative persons can figure out how to use it properly.

That would be epic.

 

[AngryMongoose]

Neat, but what can this engine actually do in real time?

Think of what we had say... fifteen years ago.

Spoiler

That's a tech demo for the PS1. As in, "Look at what our hardware can do!" demo.

I think we all know that we're going to be getting this kinda technology relatively soon.
And it will be Sweet.

HOLYSHIT! That's almost looks as real as a photograph!