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Euclideon (aka. Unlimited Detail) is at it again

category: general [glöplog]
Just listening to this asshole talk about UN-LIMITED POINT CLOUD DAAARTTA is making me angry.

Yay, sparse-voxel octrees!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AvCxa9Y9NU
added on the 2014-09-19 14:50:42 by patson patson
My favorite part of the video is where an actual realtime presentation is seen and it runs like ass.
added on the 2014-09-19 14:54:50 by Gargaj Gargaj
I'd like to see a unlimited detail tetris!
Also, they want money now.
added on the 2014-09-19 14:58:50 by Preacher Preacher
nVidia is doing much cooler stuff with voxels: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/maxwells-voxel-global-illumination-technology-introduces-gamers-to-the-next-generation-of-graphics
added on the 2014-09-19 15:28:19 by Scali Scali
My favorite part of the video is where "real world" footage is shown for comparison and it's plain obvious from the first second that it is (bad) CG. Actually having some shading instead of baked-at-acquisition lighting would help.

The videos are funny and pathetic, but it's "only" the BRDF acquisition they are missing for high quality results and there are methods which could possibly be expanded to laser-scanned objects. Oh, and an actual demonstration. And apparently a speedup.
added on the 2014-09-19 16:05:37 by cupe cupe
how many mbytes would the white room scene need? any idea
added on the 2014-09-19 16:17:00 by Navis Navis
He didn't fool me for even a second. I find it funny that he talks about "cardboard polygons", when it's his voxel-renderer that looks completely flat and dull.
added on the 2014-09-19 16:22:29 by kusma kusma
I think the "real world footage" would be a lot more convincing if it had motion blur and a credible camera path.
added on the 2014-09-19 16:29:50 by fizzer fizzer
...and some dynamic specular / reflections. All that marble, no shininess.
added on the 2014-09-19 16:40:17 by kusma kusma
I like how he claims that voxels are "New Next-Gen Technology". Yeah, I don't know about you but 1990 isn't really "next-gen" or "modern" in my book. Also I love how he claims that it has "infinite detail"... We aren't dealing with mandelbulbs or other fractals here, but scanned 3D objects for the most part, and since we live in reality and not in one of those CSI shows, we can't pull out "infinite details" from this stuff.

But whatever, it's nothing more than buzzwords and trying to sell old technology to naive people. However, the target audience doesn't have much naive people, as one would expect from someone who cares about CGI technology. Okay, I'd understand if he found some great and awesome way to use voxels, which would make it a new technology, but so far there's nothing that wasn't done before.

Overall, it's a product for... no one? Target audience is too smart to take it, but the people who apparently like it don't know anything about how CGI works, and they wouldn't have any real use out of it.

I might be wrong, but here's my two cents. I just find this ridiculous.
added on the 2014-09-19 16:43:00 by TomoAlien TomoAlien
here we go again. :D

the joke was flat. i waited for that it's actually "our render" (lol - nature rendered ;).

so... yeah... fact... the whole promo is snapshots of the real world. why discuss any lighting technologies? or the term realtime? it's only about how fast it renders. and... good enough for that.

as for tech... : i don't wanna know how they get it all a fair amount of exposure to get it viewable from all angles without holes. it's example of inside volume with "cloud shadows". nasty lil job to get the data corrected.

or... "they can do it dynamic?!" good but it's still volumetric stop-motion. i'd guess. right? really insert light? or rebake the data cloud. with dynamics is what makes it complex to recompute i'd think. gaming scenario is moderately tough. but i guess they fair geeks. they want gaming too. i'll not say it'd not do it. they just gotta try it. :)
added on the 2014-09-19 16:50:26 by yumeji yumeji
streetview looks even more realistic, just ditch the voxels next time! ;)
His implementation probably holds a lot of interesting (not so unlimited) details but it's not that viable without dynamic geometry or at least better shading. And overall higher quality, when he first came around the level of geometric detail was actually pretty neat, now it's kind of standard. Not sure about all the fuzz every time, I've been trying to just ignore the guy ever since he started making all these big claims.
added on the 2014-09-19 18:13:47 by msqrt msqrt
So basically they ran out of grant money. And since the Government now are such tight arses, they are asking the general public?

ROFL.
added on the 2014-09-20 06:12:15 by mudlord mudlord
"everything is going according to plan" (from the video) ... only because they changed the plan after the first one didn't pan out the way they liked. :)

That guy also has such a huge ego, or at least puts on an air of one.

and yeah, I agree with mudlord: they sound broke and desperate.
I wouldn't give a shit about this guy if not for the fact that I am Australian and he managed to scam $2million in grant money from our government.

I can't tell if he is a legitimate scam artist or just delusional.

He uses sparse voxel octree which is hardly groundbreaking tech, there is no doubt that it is nothing more than that since it is in his patent application. So he has used a known technique to display static scenes with baked lighting, and it looks like he has given up on trying to promote it as a game engine and found an industry where 10 year old tech is somewhat useful. Obviously the geospacial industry is 10 years behind the times.

He never specifies any hard facts or performance data, only vague claims which would apply to the very specific and limited scenes he uses in his videos. Its not that he has no product at all, but the fact is his product is nothing new or broadly useful. Oh he compresses LIDAR .las files to 20% of original size by discarding data that is redundant for rendering purposes then reducing the data resolution, wow what a genius! And it only takes dozens of hours to convert the file, how amazing!

His biggest crime is that his voice in the videos is patronising and annoying as fuck, he talks to his audience like you would talk to a 6 year old child.

Can't believe I even wasted time to rant about this jerk but I am drunk so whatever.
added on the 2014-09-20 15:51:59 by drift drift
Didn't this guy first start showing off 'Unlimited Detail' way back in 2004? Does that make the YouTube link above a tenth anniversary video? If so, that's what I call a protracted development cycle.
Peter Dell > Bruce Dell
added on the 2014-09-20 17:01:58 by Scali Scali
I think his first public display was around 2002-2003. So yeah, the fact it has taken more than 10 years and his product still doesn't do what he initially claimed really says something. After all this time he releases a basic renderering engine with no dynamic lighting or animation capability. Its the same sort of thing you see from student and hoby programmers these days in basic javascript/webGL.

He also seems to hire and fire staff regularly due to lack of revenue. Just seems like someone dicking around with mediocre technology and making retarded youtube videos, not a cutting edge software firm. There are plenty of companies around that promise a lot and never deliver and quietly disappear but the fact he conned the government out of one of the largest grants ever when plenty of more worthy businesses are stuggling is what annoys me.

Two million dollars of taxpayer money...
added on the 2014-09-20 17:55:04 by drift drift
Maybe http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~uffe/HighResolutionSparseVoxelDAGs.pdf.

Offtopic:
Scali: Did you really fall for the marketing BS? :D https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/publications/GIVoxels-pg2011-authors.pdf - almost old - and well "GI" :). The other "new" techniques (MFAA, DSR (wow downsampling!)) are pretty similar to some things presented at SIGGRAPH2014.
Comparing 980 GTX with the 680 GTX... well, no comment - waiting for the proper benchmarks (against 780 Ti GTX).
added on the 2014-09-20 17:58:53 by las las
Euclideon: Unlimited Development Time
Quote:
"A lot of professionals on the internet said our claims were impossible -
but they were wrong [smirk] "
added on the 2014-09-20 19:24:59 by numtek numtek
Quote:
Scali: Did you really fall for the marketing BS? :D https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/publications/GIVoxels-pg2011-authors.pdf - almost old - and well "GI" :).


The technique isn't new. However, Maxwell 2 has some new fixed-function hardware to accelerate such voxel-based techniques, and THAT is what I was referring to.
It's now fast enough for practical uses, rather than just some research papers.
added on the 2014-09-20 22:24:22 by Scali Scali

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