'Unlimited Detail' - The end of polygon graphics?

[Scythax]

Hello all. I was browsing youtube for details on Crysis 2 when I stumbled across this, and became VERY interested VERY quickly, in what it was laying claim to. From the outset, it sounded pretty outlandish, but after doing a little research into the topic, I think that these guys may have found the most important development in computer imaging of the last few decades. If this turns out to be all it's hyped up as, then ATI and Nvidia are going to be very pissed off...

Youtube demo (keep in mind it's a tech-demo, not a dev-demo)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-ATtrImCx4

Company Website
http://unlimiteddetailtechnology.com/


Thoughts?

 

[Sneaklemming]

Yeh I saw this too. It's a long video but worth it, but I can there are issues with it, got to do with lighting, and the way textures are handled. Also they havn't shown animation yet.

So I'm not holding my breath that I wont need a new graphics card in 2 years time.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

That graphics demo didn't look very...graphicy. But at least they're trying to something different.

I remain skeptical. "Pure Snake Oil" as one commenter said.

 

[ultrachicken]

The link didn't work for me...

 

[Larx]

Not entirely impressed, things would have looked better if they gave us an up-close picture of an example of this rather than make one and copy and paste it eleventy billion times expected anyone to be impressed by it. The concept sounds nice, but overall the presentation was rather lacking.

 

[Scythax]

The link didn't work for me...

Weird. It's working fine for me. Try looking at it again in a minute or so.

That graphics demo didn't look very...graphicy. But at least they're trying to something different.

I remain skeptical. "Pure Snake Oil" as one commenter said.

The reason it didn't look very "graphicy" is because it was a demo made by the programs tech developers, not by highly skilled graphics design experts from a gaming company. The video's primary role was to advertise to developer's the technology itself, and the capabilities it could provide them. Had it infact been made by games designers then it would have looked much more spectacular. Well, at least that's my assumption. So far no dev's have signed on for this new tech yet that I know of.

 

[Scythax]

Not entirely impressed, things would have looked better if they gave us an up-close picture of an example of this rather than make one and copy and paste it eleventy billion times expected anyone to be impressed by it. The concept sounds nice, but overall the presentation was rather lacking.

I thought the same thing, but then realised that that wasn't the main purpose of that shot. It's the fact that every one of those creature thingies is made up of over 10,000,000 atom dots, and there are thousands of those creature thingies on the screen at once. This was a showcase of the lowered processing requirements for the new tech. If a similar presentation had been done, with the same parameters and scale, but using polygon graphics tech, then it would have taken literally hours to render a single frame.

 

[TriggerHappyAngel]

it sounds very interesting, but i think that it will take a couple of years before we see games that will fully use that technology.

 

[Larx]

Not entirely impressed, things would have looked better if they gave us an up-close picture of an example of this rather than make one and copy and paste it eleventy billion times expected anyone to be impressed by it. The concept sounds nice, but overall the presentation was rather lacking.

I thought the same thing, but then realised that that wasn't the main purpose of that shot. It's the fact that every one of those creature thingies is made up of over 10,000,000 atom dots, and there are thousands of those creature thingies on the screen at once. This was a showcase of the lowered processing requirements for the new tech. If a similar presentation had been done, with the same parameters and scale, but using polygon graphics tech, then it would have taken literally hours to render a single frame.

Ah, didn't think of that being its purpose. Still, I wouldn't mind actually being able to see these godlike graphic dog things or whatever close up, it's great that I might be able to see a lot of them at once, but because of the lack of zoom, it looked generally like what I've come to expect from a current mainstream game. The idea does have potential though, and if they have a way to make it work, it could save me from having to shell out 100 bucks for the latest and greatest video card nonsense.

 

[oldmanwynter]

Waiting with baited breath to see if anything worthwhile comes out of this development.

 

[manaman]

Not entirely impressed, things would have looked better if they gave us an up-close picture of an example of this rather than make one and copy and paste it eleventy billion times expected anyone to be impressed by it. The concept sounds nice, but overall the presentation was rather lacking.

I thought the same thing, but then realised that that wasn't the main purpose of that shot. It's the fact that every one of those creature thingies is made up of over 10,000,000 atom dots, and there are thousands of those creature thingies on the screen at once. This was a showcase of the lowered processing requirements for the new tech. If a similar presentation had been done, with the same parameters and scale, but using polygon graphics tech, then it would have taken literally hours to render a single frame.

It sounds great for a static screen, but once you start adding animation into the system... Well there lies the reason they not only showed no animation, but the reason nobody has picked up on this yet.

If it sounds to good to be true it probably is.

 

[Darth_Dude]

This is intersting, but the commentator said it'll be 16 months till the SDK come out. Awfully long time to wait.

 

[Phoenixlight]

Looks like it has amazing potential, but would probably be rather expensive.

 

[Jandau]

Assuming for a moment that it's real and not a fake, it looks like it could both improve the quality of graphics we get while requiring less advanced hardware to run it all. Overall, I really hope it's for real.

Looks like it has amazing potential, but would probably be rather expensive.

From what the developers claim, the whole point is that it requires even less processing power than the current technology.

 

[Nurb]

they don't say how they model with points, only that they have a "search engine" that finds and renders them, but the math involved sounds crazy.

unless they model with nurbs and convert to points, but you end up with wonkey models like they had.

 

[Xodion]

I have real doubts that this technology will save any processing power - what polygons use a lot of is memory, and memory is cheap. This looks like it will require lots MORE processing to get done - it searches the entire millions-of-points list to see which is on the screen? With a moving camera, this would need to be done in EVERY SINGLE FRAME. For rendering a static world with a fixed camera, I'm sure it works great, but it's just not practical for game engines...

 

[cynicalandbored]

Hmmm, my bullshit detector is tingling... I'm surprised the video didn't include the word quantum at least once.