Could we avoid sidetracking the discussion with obscure RPG references?

There's a discussion? And it's Warhammer 40k reference.

ok, final word.

Read this.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/08/10/euclideon_unlimited_detail_bruce_dell_interview/#.UTUeiHeHOLg

Yeah, there's not much discussion going on at this point, just someone who bought all the hype about Euclidean's engine, and who refuses to understand why other people don't, no matter how much we explain it.
This thread couldn't really become any more pointless, and WH 40k references make everything better anyway.

A thwo year old article? with no details?

I think you should probably look to Carmack instead for the final word.

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/statuses/98127398683422720

Why do people hate Notch so much? I always thought he seemed like quite a likable guy. Has he said stuff I'm not aware of, or is everyone just mad because he created Minecraft? :P

Carmack says that infinite resolution is impossible and did the math to show that it wasn't possible. The video doesn't show anywhere near what they were promising and to date have failed to provide anything to indicate that it isn't a scam.

Notch is, I believe, referring to voxel technology with that statement and it does show up all over the place, however, I'm not aware of anybody doing it on the scale that they're promising. Because it would require such obscene amounts of storage capacity and processing power that you'd never be able to do it. You'd be raytracing in real time well before you could pull that off.

As for the video, until they're doing it in public for people to interact with and with technology the rest of us have access to, I'd be wary of believing in it. They could beat the odds like onLive did, but onLive was in a better position to start with.

Or to put it another way, if it were possible, the industry would be making use of it by now. Voxels were well known even outside the industry by the late '90s, I remember them using it in one of the C&C games instead of requiring a 3D accelerator.
Honestly, I think in this case it's jealousy. Or, because of Minecraft.

Why should he? Math is doing a fine job all on its own.

It's in a video, whether or not it was captured in real time or rendered slowly is not something that can easily be proven either way by a video.

I like good game. I never seem to remember to watch it when its on tv though.

I know, I googled it. So, "obscure RPG reference" :-p

But you're right, OP doesn't seem willing to discuss the topic he opened himself, but just keeps pointing to 2-year-old bits of things and saying "See?"

other games also, doesn't Outcast use a Voxel engine?


Also, a quick question, I read somewhere that one of the main problem with Voxel engines is that it is very difficult to animate, which is why most Voxel games are very static - one of the reasons they have been so blocky and stylised - it hides the fact that nothing moves... Does this still hold true?

This article doesn't make any new claims or provide any new evidence beyond the baseless claims made in the other articles.

As I understand it, Unlimited Detail is nothing more than a voxel engine that uses nested voxels, a voxel grid that contains voxel grids within each voxel. While theoretically realisable, it is practically unfeasible due to the extreme memory and processing overheads involved. It can obviously be achieved in pre-rendered movies (which I suspect the videos released thus far to be), but these obviously take more time to render and cannot be rendered in real time.
It depends. The blockiness was basically a compromise to deal with the relatively low processing power available at the time. The voxel resolution was very low, which made the landscpes look very jaggy.

Nowadays, with the processing power we have today, we could create a landscape with much greater fidelity, but we still couldn't store a great amount of detail, let alone infinite detail. Zoom enough into these voxels, and the kinks will eventually reveal themselves.

Yes, I can see that with games like Voxel Farm - but what about animating it? Is it something I dreamt up, do you know?