Idsoftware's MegaTexture tech Marketing Hype ?

phusnikn · May 2005

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Announced [May 16, 2005, 2:22 pm EDT] - Viewing Comments
id Software and Activision announce Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, a class-based multiplayer shooter in the works at Splash Damage to debut at E3. The game will be built on a new technology from id called MegaTexture "that crunches millions of polygons and a gigabyte-scale texture into a single, seamless and un-tiled landscape with unique detail down to the square inch or the un-obscured distant horizon" (though the Splash Damage Website clarifies this is on top of the DOOM 3 engine). Accompanying the announcement is a (massive) first screenshot, and here's word, which does not include a release date or target platforms:

Screenshot: web page

Sounds like marketing fluf anyone have any thoughts?

swampbug · May 2005

Who knows...

About the screenshot though.. Looks cool, but some of those designs are so uninspireing its all vanilla ice cream to me.

I really wish at least they were wearing (quake 3 style "ranger" helmets) That would be badass.

ironbearxl · May 2005

Sounds like a normal mapped landscape.

TomDunne · May 2005

Those rock formations in the background don't look like they've seen hundreds of polygons, much less millions. The terrain texture doesn't look terribly detailed, either.

eXpendabLe · May 2005

I watched a trailer on this game in Activision's booth. The game looks good, but not EPIC good imo. Some of the nice visuals were the command centers which sported some of that Doom3 glitzy animated control screens.

KDR_11k · May 2005

There already is a CVar relating to "Megatexture" in Doom 3. Never knew what that meant.

kleinluka · May 2005

I always thought the terrain in the background was the worst thing about that picture...

PaK · May 2005

the terrain looks blurry. The resolution ratio between terrain and models shouldn't be so much that it's the first thing you notice, yet it almost always is for me.

-R

pogonip · May 2005

ID does'nt hype...they talk the talk and walk the walk ... There terrain in Doom 3 is awesome im sure this will look as good or better . Probebly just a new and faster way to crunch details for large scale terrain ...as opposed to using smaller maps and a landscape mesh for the very limited terrains in doom 3 .

RickA · May 2005

There's been some talk about this over at GameDev as well. Nobody's really sure what it is exactly though.

JKMakowka · May 2005

I guess it can be compared to the inovation they put in Quake3 TeamArena. Quite a bit of marketing speech back then too.

The terrain-tech used in Q3:TA was nice, but nothing revolutionary.

adam · May 2005

[ QUOTE ]
Looks cool, but some of those designs are so uninspireing its all vanilla ice cream to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Its as if you went into my brain and stole my thoughts exactly!

jzero · May 2005

Terrain texturing, bah. If I were Carmack, I'd be moving forward on new technology that would make polygonal characters' hands actually look as if they were holding onto something. Like, gun grips, for example. Get a load of the guys in that pic, man. The rightmost pair aren't even holding their weapons correctly. Sheesh.

/jzero

Paul Jaquays · May 2005

I'd almost be willing to lay down money that Carmack DIDN'T do the primary coding (or design) for Megatexture(TM). He's most likely at work on "THE NEXT BUG THING" at id. He's usually not very involved in outside joint-venture projects like this, anyway (historically speaking). There are other talented coders at id like Jim Dose, Ttimo, Mr. Elusive, and Robert Duffy. Jim Dose did the original "tri soup" code that we used to make the terrain maps in Q3 Team Arena. Would not surprise me in the least to discover that Megatexture is a joint exercise between several of the other guys in the id coder pool.

gauss · May 2005

personally i've been excited since that press release dropped; it's been a long time since we've had a completely nonsensical buzzword thrown around in the industry. i'd really love to have a t-shirt with MEGATEXTURE(tm) boldly emblazoned across the front, possibly with that completely bullshit press speak-ese explanation following it

Frankie · May 2005

Gauss, its not nonsensical. Its a texture and it is mega, I fail to see how you miss the logic. The future plan is to make some optimazations so it can be renamed a TURBOMEGATEXTURE but these optimations may come in two stages to enable it to be eventually called a HYPERTURBOMEGATEXTURE.

Mojo2k · May 2005

jz i agree the hands look dumb, but honestly decent terrain would add more to game play and general asthetics than propper gun grip, also in the screens nothing looks verry amazing about the texture but i imagine il looks better in game like most normal mapped things (except battlefield V, and EQ2) i did not read too closely what megatexture is, but kinda sounds like almost a procedural way of making unique terrrain out of various textures, which could be neat but no major deal.

hey gauss "normal maps" was about the same kind of buzz word and currently its pretty commonly used, but thinking back, they should have caled normal maps Ultramaps, would hav been better

arshlevon · May 2005

there is a demo of the new playstation doing exacly what they are talking about.. its an un tiled texture.. so every pixel on the map is unique and you dont have to worry about areas looking the same. basically it takes a huge texture like 1 or 2 gigs worth of texture data and compresses it..and does some kind of progammer mumbo jumbo to only render clearly what it closest to you so you dont have the 2 gig texture floating around in memory..i think its a really good idea and the possibilies are really awesome.. expecially with normal maps.. it would be cool to do this kind of thing with characters too.. for like close ups .. some type of dynamic texture lod..

there has been a solution for rendering this kind of stuff out for a while its called wavegen http://www.ermapper.com/downloads/download_view.aspx?PRODUCT_VERSION_ID=185
from what i hear its super fast so i guess they used a similar technique for realtime..

KDR_11k · May 2005

Frankie: I'm waiting for the HYPERTURBOMEGATEXTURE TOURNAMENT EDITION DX myself...

Irritant · May 2005

It's a pretty cool technology no matter how you look at it. That screenshot just isn't really the greatest example of showing it off.

Everybody wants to bash Id. Seems like it's been like that ever since Quake came out. Always trying to tear down the old man on top of the mountain for the sake of the new. Human nature at it's finest.

JKMakowka · May 2005

[ QUOTE ]
Everybody wants to bash Id. Seems like it's been like that ever since Quake came out. Always trying to tear down the old man on top of the mountain for the sake of the new. Human nature at it's finest.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not me, I love them

They are the only ones that get the 'feel' of FPS engines right (which pretty much translates into other games that use id engines). And their games are quite good too (just not very innovative, other that techincal innovation).
And last but not least, they support Linux and opensource, which alone would be a reason to love them.

And as far as I know a lot of people think like me (=are id fanboys

)

okkun · May 2005

Looks like a heightmap with a detail texture layer to me. This screenshot is probably completely unrelated to the statement. Some marketing bozo probably messed up :P

gauss · May 2005

mojo: but the term normal map is actually descriptive to what a normal map does, and they have, in fact, made something of a difference about how a game looks. they might have been hyped up a lot, but it is at least a real technology.

MEGATEXTURE on the other hand is totally awesome and totally unstoppable!

Faucet · May 2005

Sounds like a neat way of using a really big texture... like one that takes up a couple gigs... and loading only what's needed to display what you see into RAM. Sounds nifty, but MEGATEXTURE (tm) is really retarded.

It's like they'd call mip-mapping SMALLER-SIZER-FILTER-TEXTURE (tm) or UV scrolling SUPER-MOVING-TEXTURE-EXTREME-ALPHA-4-TURBO!!~ (tm)

motives · May 2005

seems they looked into maya terminology before they came up with that name

poopinmymouth · May 2005

I don't think it's dumb at all. The members of this board can listen to the tech explanation behind it and understand, but the average consumer certainly won't. If this technology results in better looking landscapes (which I think it will) then it's great to be able to refer to it by one name, and have the end consumer know what they are getting, even if they don't understand the tech mumbo jumbo behind it.

Sometimes marketing might seem lame, but it's a necessary evil when working with the retards that buy our products.

Eric Chadwick · May 2005

I agree with poop there, "virtual displacement mapping" has a better ring to it than "offset bump mapping."

Idsoftware's MegaTexture tech Marketing Hype ?

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