| Netyaroze said: @HappySquirrel. No Voxels are no thing of the past. Definetly not Cryengine 3 will utilise them in a lesser extent and the ID Tech Engine 6 (Yes the next one 5 is even out now) There is a reason why Computergames will have a lotmore advantage of Voxels then any Movie in future. Its easy Voxels are NO Progress for Movies. Infact its completly senseless to use them in Movies. Why should it be the future of game engine programming ? Its easy Today everything consists out of Textures and Polygone walls. Its pretty simple. Its like a flat scenery. Its actualy not real. the Voxels will model everything even the Inside of Figures. And Objekts. There will be no need for textures because everything will be modelled and be really 3d no bumbmapping no plain surfaces which look like they would be 3 dimensional because of Textures no. They will be completly modelled. Everything will be like it should be. And another reason is Movies dont allow you to act. But Games do. For example with multiple Textues you make effects like if you shoot someone in the head or something. Voxels will allow to modell everything inside a figure. The World will actually be filled. For a less drastic example if you would make a whole in a Wall the wall would have a actual structure insi9de her. And would look differently maybe you could see there is wood in the wall and some old water tubes etc etc. Today the graphics try to make it seem that the world is something other thejust a simple scenery. With Voxels they will be able to fill the whole game with reality. And you can make acutally everything. Today you cant make a whole in the ground even if you have bombs or a drill but if everything will be modelled with voxels you can make everything you could make a whole in every part of the world and even a deppen whole and you can go through walls if you have some explosivs or a drill. Hmm I have Problems to explain what I think. Voxels will make the Virtual World finaly real. the voxels of the 90s. I know the games but you cant compare it to the future possibilitys. They used the Voxels like they use Polygons and Textures. But Voxels are used for example in a MRT to make the 3 dimensional picture. Voxel are the future the Computing Power for full Voxel engines together with animations and Physics is too low it will take a lot of time to make this possible. But it has begun and the trend wont stop because even if you make the world look perfect in a videogame it will always feel artifical and unreal because of the restrictions the games are suffering. Voxels will make Games real. You could make a game for Blue Gene easily but it will take time for Consoles to catch up with this SuperComputer. It will be possible a PS3 was 10years ago like a SuperComputer. They will slowly introduce the Voxel effects like they try to do in Cryengine 3 or ID tech engine 5. Its a necessary step to make the feeling of games more real. And it will be 100% the future there is no other way. Games are not Movies. Maybe they will first have to use Textures on Voxels to polish the games And only a few Objects with Voxels. If they would make the voxels really really small they could make everything like it look in reality but the Computer Power and Storage is to high atleast today. Voxels are the Atoms of the Videogame world. They could build everything exactly as it is. Its the future no other Technology has the same potential atleast yet. I dont know how long it will take to break through but I am sure I will see it. The games in the 90s were just playing with this new Graphics thing. The Computers were to slow to make real use of that. Voxels offer infinite possibilitys. Voxels Textures and Polygons will merge the next years. And the End will be Full Voxel Engine with emulated animations and realtime Raytraycing. Why do you think that the Programmers still want to force the technology ? Because its a thing of the past ? For sure not Crysis 1 even used Voxels for their terrain but the terrain was not filled they used maybe a tiny layer. or a couple of voxel layers. Its anywhere near what I think will be the future. You can make Voxels as small as you want and you can use almost as much as you want for every object. I think in the beginning you wont see why they use them. Infact i think most people dont get the idea behind it its not only for the Visuals. Its inevitable they will be the next step 100%. You can EMULATE visually the reality with it. |
John Carmack (and a few other high profile graphic engine designers) have come to the conclusion that Sparse Voxel Octrees are a much better way to represent geometry than polygons for real-time raytracing because they require simpler ray-intersection calculations; and with a properly designed GPU using this datastructure could result in 4 to 10 times the performance being achieved over conventional raytracing. There are two problems with this approach, it would require massive retraining of artists and being that they represent the vast bulk of game development costs today how efficient they're with a modeling paradigm matters far more than how efficient the hardware is with the datastructure it creates, and nVidia & ATI are reluctant to accept the conclusions of John Carmack because they would have to break compatibility with games that pre-date these new GPUs.
Don't get me wrong, the sparse voxel octree makes for a cool tech-demo and may show up in a couple of games, but it is unlikely to have the effect you anticipate because (as Nintendo has so adequately demonstrated with the Wii) graphics have hit a point where the extent that people care about high end graphics has been drastically reduced. Most developers (who don't make their money licencing technology and convincing people of the need to have the latest and greatest graphics) have already realized this, and it is likely in 2015 developers will continue trying to get decent performance out of a 5 year old $100 GPU rather than focus on trying to get superior graphics out of a new GPU that few people will buy.
