Definitely something I'd like to see more of but the marketing moves are very odd. Disappearing completely, then showing up displaying everything they have, which is only like grass, dirt, trees and vines and stuff. Also, apologizing repeatedly for lack of material in the debut..? At that rate, they could have easily held out another month, had a line of new point cloud rendered specials, then swept up more sponsorship. Instead, it is back to waiting..
Sounds amazing but very secretive, it would be better if they had a timeline for completion and when we can start seeing games with this new technology for sale. It will probably be several years (2015+) before we start seeing games with this kind of technology as it takes several years to develop a game and it will take some time to companies to adopt this new technology if its real at all.
I'd actually want to see a technical spec of how this engine works before getting excited about it. There's no clear reason why this would run better on video cards than polygon-based systems, and because of depth culling it should actually be way, way worse. The only thing I can think of is that this has somehow bypassed that so you only need to do a linear number of calculations per pixel - but I want to see proof of that.
This isn't actually anything new, they have been working on such a system for quite some years now, granted they have made some breakthroughs however the finished product is simply miles from completion. What you see in that video is what is technically possible however as yet it has not been developed into a functioning engine, it is basically a stilled image working within another program, not independently. You can read some of Notch's feedback and speculation (which most of it I agree with) here http://notch.tumblr.com/ In short, its real, its not a scam, HOWEVER they claiming more than it is presently worth and avoiding its flaws to gain attention / funding.
This type of graphics has been out a while. I used to work as a land/engineering surveyor before I went to uni and we ended up using Laser scanners on some jobs to collect 'point cloud' data which you could then view and edit using software. The link below shows some of the scans that I've worked on scanning various building, bridges and even golf course greens (The scans of the greens are then turned into the 3D animations showing slopes etc that you might see on TV) http://www.severnpartnership.co.uk/projects_3d_laser_scanning_point_clouds.htm Bare in mind that these are scans and the resolution (Where each point is taken) can vary from say every 10mm down to every 2mm which obviously gives a denser scan point cloud and therefore shows more detail. Games would obviously need to go into more detail/higher res for their clouds. The technology is out there and has been for some time. It just needs backing and for developers to actually take notice and pick it up.
Yes they have been working on this for a while, and yes this technology has been out for a while. The thing they are showcasing is their engine is starting to become done and they were actually moving around in it in that video, and the fact that although in the engineering field they have this sort of thing, it is completely impossible in the past to use that for any kind of gaming because of the immense amount of data. It wasnt even possible to play it at 1 fps in the past using other system. They created a system (and are still working in it and have much to do) that will allow this technology to actually be utilized in a game and bring detail far beyond what we have now. Its like most of you didnt even watch the video past 30 seconds...
I only managed to watch about 30-40 secs of it lol as I was on my phone with a crap 3g signal Just watched the whole thing now and seen that they actually scanned a rock in just to show it off. and yeah scan clouds are a massive amount of data in comparison to this.
That's amazing. And Notch's impressions seem valid however, written by a man whose own game has more coding problems I can count and renders like a lego set that I can't stare at past 30 minutes without a headache. The problem I can see with this is the general comsumer isn't going to have the money to drop on the hardware needed for this. Therefore, from an investor standpoint, I wouldn't see much market here. Now, if they could do this on an affordable set up? Yeaaaahhhh
I saw this posted on the eVGA forums the other day, and somehow managed to watch the entire video. The guy's commentary got on my nerves but its a great step towards GPU power and tech.
thank you Enigma for saying that, was reading some post and was like uhhhh...we not watching the whole thing? haha Any of you have any theory in how long this will take? Years wise, I know you can't tell me but some one with more of a technology background could give me some perspective. Edit- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00gAbgBu8R4&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_3814 Higher resolution version. Second edit- I'd really like to see water, in motion.. @_@;
Not too long http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/09/21/NVIDIA-provides-rare-glimpse-at-chip-roadmap/ "Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, disclosed during an annual conference that it will deliver a chip, code named Kepler, in late 2011 that will be three to four times the performance of Fermi with little increase in power consumption. “There are hundreds of engineers working on it,†he said, estimating that the product family will require a cumulative investment of roughly $2 billion in research and development. Two years, later in 2013, Nvidia will make an even greater leap, Huang said, predicting the arrival of a chip called Maxwell will be ten to 12 times the power of Fermi" Maxwell is predicted to do 4.5 teraflops
Kepler will not be released in 2011, it is actually slated to start production in early 2012. Straight from Nvidia. What the CEO said was a mistake. TSMC, the fabricators of the Nvidia graphics chips have also had many, many problems and are known worldwide for always being late. So if it is slated for production to start in early 2012 then It probably wont be released till next Summer :/
Ya that article is from a year ago and I haven't seen anything about new stuff from Nvidia for this year while looking for parts for my comp so I had assumed it had gotten pushed a bit but still not that long a wait really.