No, you've been arguing about completely different things.
The correlation is there though, but it's more like this: what is the most efficient way of 3D rendering on current computer technology?
(which entails processors, memory bandwidth and background storage as well, so it's not just CPU vs GPU questions)
For now, rasterization using GPUs has no equal for realtime graphics.
That's the crux of my argument though.
You are arguing that what was presented in the video was pure hokum, and you seem quite adamant that it is nothing but smoke and mirrors. But by your own admission, you don't actually know anything about the algorithms they are using, and don't know any technical details about the software rendering they claim they've developed. You don't know because they didn't tell you, but you still don't know.
So you are actively attempting to use your technical expertise to disprove something that you are wholly unfamiliar with. And that means the entirety of your argument is based purely on speculation and assumption. All you're doing is re-iterating your technical knowledge of how things are currently done, and then flatly stating that what they are presenting is impossible because it isn't what is currently being done.
If the company in question HAD released technical information of what they were attempting, your approach to this would be valid.
But I would direct your attention to the "For now" you mentioned. You dismiss this out of hand because of that "For now."
My argument is that you shouldn't be so quick to cry foul, and that unconventional is not the same as impossible. History is littered with examples of naysayers being persecuted or ridiculed because they questioned conventional wisdom. I can't help but feel that the vitriol in reaction to this video is along those lines. You don't like it because its different. You don't like it because it challenges what you hold as a given.
I'm not arguing that this company is actually going to achieve anything. I'm not reaching for my wallet. I won't be investing my life savings in this company or their supposed rendering system. But I'm not going to write them off, or hope that they collapse, or anything as drastic as many of you seem to suggest. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. I like it when people try the road less traveled.
(shrug) I find that common sense is far more useful for arguments than technical knowledge.
I don't know anything more technical then what I can read in the UDK paper, but Lordy, that's like saying "An anatomy artist shouldn't know about muscle, bone and fat structures" and be just good through grunge work.
I can understand that Unlimited Detail has some potential for the future. However, there's a huge long way between this demo and proved technology for games!. This following article pretty much sum it all...
You are arguing that what was presented in the video was pure hokum, and you seem quite adamant that it is nothing but smoke and mirrors. But by your own admission, you don't actually know anything about the algorithms they are using, and don't know any technical details about the software rendering they claim they've developed.
Quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, probably isn't a monkey.
There's more than enough information just by looking at the demo to draw valid conclusions.
It only has a few objects repeated over and over, without arbitrary rotations, so it looks like it simply instances the lower levels of the same data structure. From this we can deduce that it is most likely based on an octree and thus it has all its inherent drawbacks which are well known. It's also not called sparse voxel octree by its programmer, but he already admitted why he did that (draw attention to himself) and that it's basically the same.
Also, we haven't seen any demonstration of solutions to the problems we've mentioned - deformation, animation, dynamic lighting, complex shading, content variation instead of a small set of objects combined with memory requirements.
Since the entire graphics research and development community has not yet managed to solve these problems, and he is admittedly not very proficient in computer graphics, we have to assume that he doesn't have any solutions either.
So I think it is a reasonably objective and grounded argument. It is very very likely a well known tech with a small modification somewhere in the rendering pipeline, which is probably insignificant to the debate here.
So you are actively attempting to use your technical expertise to disprove something that you are wholly unfamiliar with.
If it is using an octree, then it is not something unfamiliar.
We've mostly proved that it is an octree, and he never denied it either. So your argument is invalid.
The rest of your post is 'common sense', which I chose to ignore completely.
lol @ common sense
who told you c is the best language for multitreading?
thats about the same statement like chicken is the best with ketchup.
this unlimited detail seems to heavily depend on instancind (not only objects) but parts of them objects too, so they can spare some of their atoms for saving.
so it seems like a tree is about equally repeatative like the well known poly trees,
but them polygons dont blend into each other
maybe thats the pointthe spokesperson trys to say.
but id rather not count on that stuff alone
i can imagen classical polylevels with point cloud data or voxels on intersections.
that would be some reasonable usage
...I'm not going to write them off, or hope that they collapse, or anything as drastic as many of you seem to suggest. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. I like it when people try the road less traveled.
But it's not a 'road less traveled'; it's really old tech that lots of people have been using constantly for ages. Heck, since Minecraft came out voxels have been all the rage. All they've done is changed the name for marketing spin (which, clearly, worked very well).
If they were serious they'd be releasing white papers at conferences instead making cheesy promo videos and avoiding all the crucial issues. They would be using standard terms instead of marketing spin. They would be showing clear, concise demos instead of smoke-and-mirrors trickery.
I agree that there's no reason to wish for them to collapse; that would be rather extremist and unnecessary. Still, 'benefit of the doubt' is unwarranted here. You're free to cling to it, but don't expect other people to trust someone who has already broken their trust several times.
And if it ends up that they came up with some revolutionary rendering technique unknown to an entire industry filled with experts on computation and mathematics, maybe one day you'll be playing games with Unlimited Detail on your Phantom console.
And regarding GPU vs CPU. As vargatom has said GPU's are simply faster than cpus for almost any semi-intensive task. Programmable shaders keep getting more flexible and cuda/opencl were created to take advantage it. GPU's are now a viable solution for super intensive indirect rendering tasks such as offline rendering, lightmap calculation, and even completely non-rendering related tasks such as bitcoin miners for example. GPUs are advancing much faster than CPUs. The fact that this tech is still running on a CPU is not good.
I'm for David vs Goliath but seriously when David talks a bunch of smack for a few years then shows up with a shoelace and a lump of poo I have to wonder if he knows what he's getting himself into.
The reason why sparse voxel ocree's cant be used is because its practically impossible with animation since with every frame, u need to reconstruct the ocree.
He starts off great then slips back into being a douche fairly quickly. It's weird the first few answers the voice in my head was a normal Australian accent but then as he slipped into douchebag territory I heard the voice from the videos...
And by douchebag I mean he gives two examples that aren't anywhere close to matching.
Worst case tessellation at ultra low res, VS beauty shot from his video.
I think its time we see the same objects, same scene using both techniques, without a heavy bias. The bias is really annoying and without it his tech barely tows the line...
He can hide behind a low grade tessellation test, and he probably turns away anytime someone shows him some of the tessellation videos, but I still think his dirt looks like a lot of poop... You could easily get that same shiny fresh dog turd look out of tessellation.
He might have a point with the grass sprouts, the way they curve in his unlimited detail shot would be hard for tessellation to replicate, but another system would probably be put in place if they where bigger than ground cover.
His tech might make an awesome bush/tree system... which I think they should explore.
But considering it seems like he's hell bent on all or nothing, I guess they won't settle for revolutionizing the industry like every other advancement have (in small chunks working with all the other tech)... His argument is a bit like demanding that normal maps or parallax be applied to every surface.
At the end of the day, everyone is making too many assumptions about the technology.
Maybe they found a work-around in regards to the issues many of you have mentioned? Wouldn't be that surprising since they've been developing their tech for the last decade.
You guys really don't give human ingenuity any thought at all. Wow, they pushed hard on a tech they believed in when nobody else would and ended up working around things that others could not.
That's how every great invention has been made. One guy or a group of guys ostracized for their ideas... until they pull it off. Then they are praised like they were never looked down upon to begin with.
You guys really don't give human ingenuity any thought at all. Wow, they pushed hard on a tech they believed in when nobody else would and ended up working around things that others could not.
Except they haven't yet worked around those things.
Go back and read everything vargatom posted, it's some really good technical posts and insight into this.
Here's a picture of a flying car, it's flying in this picture, right? So we totally have flying cars.
Incidentally this company also popped up in 2003, claiming things and never delivering.
No, it isn't good insight into this because vargatom doesn't know anything about their implementation. It's conjecture based on assumptions.
They got $2 million in funding from the Australian government for something that is being touted as a games technology... and it is obvious that they would have had to completely explain their technology to the government before they were even considered for funding.
We've had flying cars for quite a while. Those do exist, are sold, and are used by private citizens... that's a bad example.
Just because one companies' flying cars didn't work doesn't mean another companies' don't work.
But you know, its tough for their artist who is under such time constraints that he can only finish enough to fit a square, clearly has nothing to do with any tech-limitations.
If it takes as much storage space as people are predicting and even if its not as huge as some people say it is still going to be pretty big. There might be a use for a wide array of SSD drives positioned in a RAID... That would be frighteningly expensive but could be amazing to witness.
I'll still say because of the grand statements (some of them outright false) in the presentation videos I think he's overselling what he has, not only to appease the AUS gov but to woe potential investors.
I'll still give their tech the hairy eyeball until they cough up some actual proof that people can play with and some semblance of a pipeline. I'd be happy if whatever they spat out next was on par or better than voxelstien.
The biggest problem I see isn't technical, it's philosophical -- why is unlimited detail desirable? Increased graphical detail helps immersion, yes, but only up to a point. After that, the returns diminish sharply.
Whenever I see anyone talk about capturing more and more of the real world, I can't help but think about Robert Zemeckis. He was (and is) so convinced that if only his crew could capture more points on actors' faces, the performance would be that much more convincing. Same with LA Noire -- and yet, neither that game nor Polar Express are anywhere near as immersive as the creators hoped. Perhaps the assumption that more detail equals greater immersion has its limits?
I bet many of us could come up with ideas that would improve immersion in games -- more intelligent AI, more attention to facial animation, etc. -- and none of them would derive from complaints about lack of polygons. I can't help but feel that the technology on display here is an immense amount of effort aimed at a problem that isn't really a problem.
I'm not saying graphics right now are "good enough", but when I look around at games coming out in the next six months, polygon count isn't the main determining factor of immersion. Uncharted 3 looks spectacular because the art direction is incredibly cohesive. Battlefield 3 looks amazing because of the lighting and the attention to detail with the character animation. No one is going to play those games and wish the ground was made up of individual clumps of dirt.
No, it isn't good insight into this because vargatom doesn't know anything about their implementation. It's conjecture based on assumptions.
As is every post here. Except vargatom's conjecture is also grounded in experience and education, whereas yours is just grounded in a nonsensical topsy turvy burden of proof where incredible claims, when faced with clear evidence of their falsehood, are treated with ludicrous amounts of reverence.
He might have a point with the grass sprouts, the way they curve in his unlimited detail shot would be hard for tessellation to replicate, but another system would probably be put in place if they where bigger than ground cover.
His tech might make an awesome bush/tree system... which I think they should explore.
I've only done minor experiments with it, but xNormal has an implementation of Direction Maps, which can pretty much do that. (I think that was the term.)
I've only done minor experiments with it, but xNormal has an implementation of Direction Maps, which can pretty much do that. (I think that was the term.)
The problem is the comparison is a joke. There's a million great ways to do grass, none of which involve displacement maps or tessellation.
Except they haven't yet worked around those things.
Go back and read everything vargatom posted, it's some really good technical posts and insight into this.
Here's a picture of a flying car, it's flying in this picture, right? So we totally have flying cars.
Incidentally this company also popped up in 2003, claiming things and never delivering.
Holy fucking bloody hell-fire shit from hades! Guys, forget this, we have FLYING CARS! Why didn't Pixar make a movie about this?!
id Software's John Carmack - a renowned name in graphics programming - has made a cautiously optimistic comment that your technology sounds feasible in a couple of years, but probably not on current hardware. Does that match your timelines?
Euclideon: Firstly Id like to say that I greatly respect John Carmack for his enormous contribution to 3D industry.
In light of the fact that we havent released real time demos, his statement is sensible, sane, reasonable, but incorrect.
Incorrect... haha I love this whole thing, comedy gold!
Spoke to Bruce's brother yesterday, he didn't even know a new vid had come out.
Tried to explain that the new video hasn't been recieved warmly by everyone.
Presenting this tech at a conference I think would be best for industry recognition so that questions can be asked and confusion cleared up.
That is the big issue when it becomes this remote back and forth everyone just gets stirred up.
Sigraph presentation, demo of tools ect when ready will help a lot because till then not much that can really be done by video alone and certainly not by a video of 40% of other engine tech.
However they are too expensive for us peons, you need a pilot license, you have to use airports and depending on the models, store the wings at the airport.
So the comparison IS FLAWED. While those continuing to joke about it are just showing ignorance.
However they are too expensive for us peons, you need a pilot license, you have to use airports and depending on the models, store the wings at the airport.
So the comparison IS FLAWED. While those continuing to joke about it are just showing ignorance.
It's a plane fuselage shaped as a car with detachable wings.
Much like how unlimited detail wants to revolutionize game-art tech as we know it, people behind flying cars wants to actually revolutionize car-traffic.
Could it be that you know, a few inherited but ultimately huge downsides to airplanes have made them impractical as flying cars, even though we've been flying for decades?
Next you're going to tell me we have cars that run on electricity and go 0-60 in 3.7 seconds and can go 245 miles on a single charge... WHEN PIGS FLY!
But seriously this and this are flying hover cars promised back in the 80-90's not this or this. In the 70's the flying plane-O-mobile was cool, I'm glad we finally caught up to the dreams of the 70's... when we should be sipping martinis served to us by fully automated robot servants, while we sit on the rooftop of our summer home on Mars. Seriously, where are the tinfoil and dryer hose outfits? If we can make them for movies we can make them for everyone else... but noooOOoo...
A car that can stand still at 200 or 2000ft using some kind of anti gravity system that hasn't been invented (YET!), that doesn't need constant forward motion to keep it flying and can hover over a peach without sand blasting it with debris and exhaust... now that's the car we're all waiting for.
When we have traffic jams in the sky we can say the tech is fully realized heh. Which is about the same time we'll see unlimited detail live up to its own hype.
I think voxels is a nice tech to play with and do more research on, the guy presents himself as if he had invented the stuff despite the various projects existing (voxelstein ftw) and plenty research in the past. And he doesn't touch the hard-topics nor shows solutions, about the very stuff mentioned here a couple times (compression, animation...).
Another example on the topic is this guy's work http://atomontage.com/
imo he has quite a realistic view on the technology and seems like a very sane person.
NVIDIA, AMD, INTEL... plenty of graphics faculties, all "dare" to compete/drive technology in research, they are quite open about it, discuss things at conferences, review the work of peers... rasterization, raytracing... they all have gone through evolution and are here not without reason.
Anyway I don't want to be the guy in the aus gov who got him the 2 mio
Basically a very fast (calculations are done remotely on Autodesk's farm) and advanced photo modeling system that generates a high poly mesh with textures; but of course all lighting, shading, reflections etc. are baked into that texture.
Next you're going to tell me we have cars that run on electricity and go 0-60 in 3.7 seconds and can go 245 miles on a single charge... WHEN PIGS FLY!
But seriously this and this are flying hover cars promised back in the 80-90's not this or this. In the 70's the flying plane-O-mobile was cool, I'm glad we finally caught up to the dreams of the 70's... when we should be sipping martinis served to us by fully automated robot servants, while we sit on the rooftop of our summer home on Mars. Seriously, where are the tinfoil and dryer hose outfits? If we can make them for movies we can make them for everyone else... but noooOOoo...
A car that can stand still at 200 or 2000ft using some kind of anti gravity system that hasn't been invented (YET!), that doesn't need constant forward motion to keep it flying and can hover over a peach without sand blasting it with debris and exhaust... now that's the car we're all waiting for.
When we have traffic jams in the sky we can say the tech is fully realized heh. Which is about the same time we'll see unlimited detail live up to its own hype.
Modesty, they don't gotz it...
What where we talking about again?
You're forgetting about the part where there are horrific mid air collisions, crashing and burning in offices which are 'bring your children to work day', near a pet shop full of puppies because we're too busy playing angry birds ;p
Replies
That's the crux of my argument though.
You are arguing that what was presented in the video was pure hokum, and you seem quite adamant that it is nothing but smoke and mirrors. But by your own admission, you don't actually know anything about the algorithms they are using, and don't know any technical details about the software rendering they claim they've developed. You don't know because they didn't tell you, but you still don't know.
So you are actively attempting to use your technical expertise to disprove something that you are wholly unfamiliar with. And that means the entirety of your argument is based purely on speculation and assumption. All you're doing is re-iterating your technical knowledge of how things are currently done, and then flatly stating that what they are presenting is impossible because it isn't what is currently being done.
If the company in question HAD released technical information of what they were attempting, your approach to this would be valid.
But I would direct your attention to the "For now" you mentioned. You dismiss this out of hand because of that "For now."
My argument is that you shouldn't be so quick to cry foul, and that unconventional is not the same as impossible. History is littered with examples of naysayers being persecuted or ridiculed because they questioned conventional wisdom. I can't help but feel that the vitriol in reaction to this video is along those lines. You don't like it because its different. You don't like it because it challenges what you hold as a given.
I'm not arguing that this company is actually going to achieve anything. I'm not reaching for my wallet. I won't be investing my life savings in this company or their supposed rendering system. But I'm not going to write them off, or hope that they collapse, or anything as drastic as many of you seem to suggest. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. I like it when people try the road less traveled.
I don't know anything more technical then what I can read in the UDK paper, but Lordy, that's like saying "An anatomy artist shouldn't know about muscle, bone and fat structures" and be just good through grunge work.
Not fine mate, really not fine.
John Carmack on Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Demo, Notch's Reaction To It & Carmack's Own Plans for a Voxel Renderer:
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/08/is-the-future-of-immersive-3d-in-atoms-euclideoncom.html
Quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, probably isn't a monkey.
There's more than enough information just by looking at the demo to draw valid conclusions.
It only has a few objects repeated over and over, without arbitrary rotations, so it looks like it simply instances the lower levels of the same data structure. From this we can deduce that it is most likely based on an octree and thus it has all its inherent drawbacks which are well known. It's also not called sparse voxel octree by its programmer, but he already admitted why he did that (draw attention to himself) and that it's basically the same.
Also, we haven't seen any demonstration of solutions to the problems we've mentioned - deformation, animation, dynamic lighting, complex shading, content variation instead of a small set of objects combined with memory requirements.
Since the entire graphics research and development community has not yet managed to solve these problems, and he is admittedly not very proficient in computer graphics, we have to assume that he doesn't have any solutions either.
So I think it is a reasonably objective and grounded argument. It is very very likely a well known tech with a small modification somewhere in the rendering pipeline, which is probably insignificant to the debate here.
If it is using an octree, then it is not something unfamiliar.
We've mostly proved that it is an octree, and he never denied it either. So your argument is invalid.
The rest of your post is 'common sense', which I chose to ignore completely.
who told you c is the best language for multitreading?
thats about the same statement like chicken is the best with ketchup.
this unlimited detail seems to heavily depend on instancind (not only objects) but parts of them objects too, so they can spare some of their atoms for saving.
so it seems like a tree is about equally repeatative like the well known poly trees,
but them polygons dont blend into each other
maybe thats the pointthe spokesperson trys to say.
but id rather not count on that stuff alone
i can imagen classical polylevels with point cloud data or voxels on intersections.
that would be some reasonable usage
in NOTCH I trust.
I actually believe voxels technology has bright future but not so soon, and not by that way of presentation.
but
even notch , the person who really believe and actually made a 3d game world 3 times bigger than real earth still think this is not right.
If they were serious they'd be releasing white papers at conferences instead making cheesy promo videos and avoiding all the crucial issues. They would be using standard terms instead of marketing spin. They would be showing clear, concise demos instead of smoke-and-mirrors trickery.
I agree that there's no reason to wish for them to collapse; that would be rather extremist and unnecessary. Still, 'benefit of the doubt' is unwarranted here. You're free to cling to it, but don't expect other people to trust someone who has already broken their trust several times.
And if it ends up that they came up with some revolutionary rendering technique unknown to an entire industry filled with experts on computation and mathematics, maybe one day you'll be playing games with Unlimited Detail on your Phantom console.
splitting up teh world in fanboys and haters
this generating publicity on the fly (everyone talks about it)
id experiment with voxel renderer.
[ame]
nvidia proof of concept (over 2gb of compressed data)
[ame]
And regarding GPU vs CPU. As vargatom has said GPU's are simply faster than cpus for almost any semi-intensive task. Programmable shaders keep getting more flexible and cuda/opencl were created to take advantage it. GPU's are now a viable solution for super intensive indirect rendering tasks such as offline rendering, lightmap calculation, and even completely non-rendering related tasks such as bitcoin miners for example. GPUs are advancing much faster than CPUs. The fact that this tech is still running on a CPU is not good.
Hahaha this made me giggle
http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3094648
And by douchebag I mean he gives two examples that aren't anywhere close to matching.
Worst case tessellation at ultra low res, VS beauty shot from his video.
I think its time we see the same objects, same scene using both techniques, without a heavy bias. The bias is really annoying and without it his tech barely tows the line...
He can hide behind a low grade tessellation test, and he probably turns away anytime someone shows him some of the tessellation videos, but I still think his dirt looks like a lot of poop... You could easily get that same shiny fresh dog turd look out of tessellation.
He might have a point with the grass sprouts, the way they curve in his unlimited detail shot would be hard for tessellation to replicate, but another system would probably be put in place if they where bigger than ground cover.
His tech might make an awesome bush/tree system... which I think they should explore.
But considering it seems like he's hell bent on all or nothing, I guess they won't settle for revolutionizing the industry like every other advancement have (in small chunks working with all the other tech)... His argument is a bit like demanding that normal maps or parallax be applied to every surface.
Oh and it's fun how he tries to school Carmack, too.
Maybe they found a work-around in regards to the issues many of you have mentioned? Wouldn't be that surprising since they've been developing their tech for the last decade.
You guys really don't give human ingenuity any thought at all. Wow, they pushed hard on a tech they believed in when nobody else would and ended up working around things that others could not.
That's how every great invention has been made. One guy or a group of guys ostracized for their ideas... until they pull it off. Then they are praised like they were never looked down upon to begin with.
Except they haven't yet worked around those things.
Go back and read everything vargatom posted, it's some really good technical posts and insight into this.
Here's a picture of a flying car, it's flying in this picture, right? So we totally have flying cars.
Incidentally this company also popped up in 2003, claiming things and never delivering.
They got $2 million in funding from the Australian government for something that is being touted as a games technology... and it is obvious that they would have had to completely explain their technology to the government before they were even considered for funding.
We've had flying cars for quite a while. Those do exist, are sold, and are used by private citizens... that's a bad example.
Just because one companies' flying cars didn't work doesn't mean another companies' don't work.
I'll still say because of the grand statements (some of them outright false) in the presentation videos I think he's overselling what he has, not only to appease the AUS gov but to woe potential investors.
I'll still give their tech the hairy eyeball until they cough up some actual proof that people can play with and some semblance of a pipeline. I'd be happy if whatever they spat out next was on par or better than voxelstien.
Also this guys is a huge ass. I want the tech to be real, but the PR so far screams vaporware.
Whenever I see anyone talk about capturing more and more of the real world, I can't help but think about Robert Zemeckis. He was (and is) so convinced that if only his crew could capture more points on actors' faces, the performance would be that much more convincing. Same with LA Noire -- and yet, neither that game nor Polar Express are anywhere near as immersive as the creators hoped. Perhaps the assumption that more detail equals greater immersion has its limits?
I bet many of us could come up with ideas that would improve immersion in games -- more intelligent AI, more attention to facial animation, etc. -- and none of them would derive from complaints about lack of polygons. I can't help but feel that the technology on display here is an immense amount of effort aimed at a problem that isn't really a problem.
I'm not saying graphics right now are "good enough", but when I look around at games coming out in the next six months, polygon count isn't the main determining factor of immersion. Uncharted 3 looks spectacular because the art direction is incredibly cohesive. Battlefield 3 looks amazing because of the lighting and the attention to detail with the character animation. No one is going to play those games and wish the ground was made up of individual clumps of dirt.
As is every post here. Except vargatom's conjecture is also grounded in experience and education, whereas yours is just grounded in a nonsensical topsy turvy burden of proof where incredible claims, when faced with clear evidence of their falsehood, are treated with ludicrous amounts of reverence.
I've only done minor experiments with it, but xNormal has an implementation of Direction Maps, which can pretty much do that. (I think that was the term.)
The problem is the comparison is a joke. There's a million great ways to do grass, none of which involve displacement maps or tessellation.
Holy fucking bloody hell-fire shit from hades! Guys, forget this, we have FLYING CARS! Why didn't Pixar make a movie about this?!
I agree, just pointing it out is all.
Spoke to Bruce's brother yesterday, he didn't even know a new vid had come out.
Tried to explain that the new video hasn't been recieved warmly by everyone.
Presenting this tech at a conference I think would be best for industry recognition so that questions can be asked and confusion cleared up.
That is the big issue when it becomes this remote back and forth everyone just gets stirred up.
Sigraph presentation, demo of tools ect when ready will help a lot because till then not much that can really be done by video alone and certainly not by a video of 40% of other engine tech.
However they are too expensive for us peons, you need a pilot license, you have to use airports and depending on the models, store the wings at the airport.
So the comparison IS FLAWED. While those continuing to joke about it are just showing ignorance.
It's a plane fuselage shaped as a car with detachable wings.
Much like how unlimited detail wants to revolutionize game-art tech as we know it, people behind flying cars wants to actually revolutionize car-traffic.
Could it be that you know, a few inherited but ultimately huge downsides to airplanes have made them impractical as flying cars, even though we've been flying for decades?
Next you're going to tell me we have cars that run on electricity and go 0-60 in 3.7 seconds and can go 245 miles on a single charge... WHEN PIGS FLY!
But seriously this and this are flying hover cars promised back in the 80-90's not this or this. In the 70's the flying plane-O-mobile was cool, I'm glad we finally caught up to the dreams of the 70's... when we should be sipping martinis served to us by fully automated robot servants, while we sit on the rooftop of our summer home on Mars. Seriously, where are the tinfoil and dryer hose outfits? If we can make them for movies we can make them for everyone else... but noooOOoo...
A car that can stand still at 200 or 2000ft using some kind of anti gravity system that hasn't been invented (YET!), that doesn't need constant forward motion to keep it flying and can hover over a peach without sand blasting it with debris and exhaust... now that's the car we're all waiting for.
When we have traffic jams in the sky we can say the tech is fully realized heh. Which is about the same time we'll see unlimited detail live up to its own hype.
Modesty, they don't gotz it...
What where we talking about again?
Another example on the topic is this guy's work
http://atomontage.com/
imo he has quite a realistic view on the technology and seems like a very sane person.
NVIDIA, AMD, INTEL... plenty of graphics faculties, all "dare" to compete/drive technology in research, they are quite open about it, discuss things at conferences, review the work of peers... rasterization, raytracing... they all have gone through evolution and are here not without reason.
Anyway I don't want to be the guy in the aus gov who got him the 2 mio
http://procworld.blogspot.com/2011/08/unlimited-detail.html
Can we move on now? :P
[ame]
Basically a very fast (calculations are done remotely on Autodesk's farm) and advanced photo modeling system that generates a high poly mesh with textures; but of course all lighting, shading, reflections etc. are baked into that texture.
You're forgetting about the part where there are horrific mid air collisions, crashing and burning in offices which are 'bring your children to work day', near a pet shop full of puppies because we're too busy playing angry birds ;p