I think that the Unlimited Detail Engine has lots of potential, and I hope someone improves upon it and uses it in a real game, I think that that would be interesting.
@JID: People have tried to use that sort of thing in games, it usually doesn't work. As much as people tout the merits of volumetric or parametric 3D, they usually don't work that well because the industry is focused on using polygons, the hardware is made to work with triangles, because they work well. If one wants 'infinite detail', why not use tessellation? It is a parametric surface definition applied to a polygonal surface, basically dividing the object into more polygons, then matching those to a parametrised surface, which when used with a sufficient LOD algorithm, allows for rougher models further away, then the closer you get, the more detailed they get.
Of course it's still expensive (even in a deferred renderer), but compared to a volumetric or purely parametric representation, the maths is much simpler and it performs better.If tessellation was out of the question too, then one could simply use the existing technique of mapping a high quality model to a low quality model (using either bump, normal, parallax, relief or cone step mapping or one of their variants), which if done well (or combined with numerous levels of LOD) can still produce some amazing looking visuals with decent performance too.
Yeah they did reduce the whole 'everything is destructible' thing, but IMO the lighting is better, it was way too over the top in Crysis and the light rays were just too powerful, sure it looked nice, but it was quite annoying and over the top.
Yeah, the physics was much, much better in the original, but both that and level design are gameplay choices, the engine they run on is still more than capable of doing it. Certainly I would never say that Crysis 2 was better than Crysis 1 - but it runs on a better engine, and in many ways is prettier. Certainly if you're going to go looking for a few small elements like sun shafts or water, C1 did them better, but the overall scene winner is still the second.
@jid's video, thats similar to an idea i was thinking about a while ago
Sparse voxel octrees and gigavoxels, look them up.
I think that the Unlimited Detail Engine has lots of potential, and I hope someone improves upon it and uses it in a real game, I think that that would be interesting.
@JID: People have tried to use that sort of thing in games, it usually doesn't work. As much as people tout the merits of volumetric or parametric 3D, they usually don't work that well because the industry is focused on using polygons, the hardware is made to work with triangles, because they work well. If one wants 'infinite detail', why not use tessellation? It is a parametric surface definition applied to a polygonal surface, basically dividing the object into more polygons, then matching those to a parametrised surface, which when used with a sufficient LOD algorithm, allows for rougher models further away, then the closer you get, the more detailed they get.
Of course it's still expensive (even in a deferred renderer), but compared to a volumetric or purely parametric representation, the maths is much simpler and it performs better.If tessellation was out of the question too, then one could simply use the existing technique of mapping a high quality model to a low quality model (using either bump, normal, parallax, relief or cone step mapping or one of their variants), which if done well (or combined with numerous levels of LOD) can still produce some amazing looking visuals with decent performance too.Here's a better comparison vid for Crysis 1 and 2, these are both on PC btw.
Yeah they did reduce the whole 'everything is destructible' thing, but IMO the lighting is better, it was way too over the top in Crysis and the light rays were just too powerful, sure it looked nice, but it was quite annoying and over the top.
Yeah, the physics was much, much better in the original, but both that and level design are gameplay choices, the engine they run on is still more than capable of doing it. Certainly I would never say that Crysis 2 was better than Crysis 1 - but it runs on a better engine, and in many ways is prettier. Certainly if you're going to go looking for a few small elements like sun shafts or water, C1 did them better, but the overall scene winner is still the second.