Graphics programmers call those 3D pixels "voxels". Once you have them in some sort of a spatial acceleration structure like an octree, rendering is usually pretty quick. Making voxels out of a bunch of high-res camera images is the expensive part.

give this man minecraft pre-Alpha and let him do this in voxel space...

just kidding.. the reason he is so good at this? his vision is blurry so he sees a smoother image you too, could put some glasses on and try this without a computer or with... interesting

Yeah, I'd say so, voxel is defined as the smallest unit in a 3D space.

>> ^Asmo:
>> ^lucky760:
How is this accomplished? (I don't know how to use google.)

My guess is the focal point of the laser causes the molecules at that point to become plasma which radiates a pinpoint of light, making it a pixel (is a 3d pixel still a pixel?) in the space. Create many pixels in all 3 dimensions, you have a 3d hologram.
The air image is much cleaner (you can't see the lines trailing in/out) because there are far less molecules in the way to bleed off the laser as opposed to water.


I guess its a voxel.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Euclideon, Island, Demo, 2011' to 'Euclideon, Island Demo, 2011, point cloud, voxel, engine, polygons, atoms' - edited by xxovercastxx

I only meant ask Notch where "the companies that specialize in 1000x better designed gameplay, stories, and things that matter to the core of the gaming experience besides GRAFFIPHX and polygons [are]."

because he seems to have figured it out (everything besides GFX that is).

wow didnt know he ripped into the tech so much.. i guess i said something relevant to two interpretations... and i feel good about it!

>> ^spoco2:

As alluded to above, Mr Minecraft, Notch says It's a scam
Ahh voxels, how I remember you from Comanche... you know... last century.
Voxels have been around for a very long time, they have their benefits and their weaknesses just like polygons. There's nothing 'revolutionary' about them.
So, yeah. Nice little demo they have there, but that's about it.

Yeah this guys ebullience is unwarranted. Voxels are fine for something like fixed geometry, but are gimped for anything involving animation or physiscs (hence the lack of it in these videos).

This tech might be fine for middleware but I don't see it revolutionising graphics engines any time soon.

Edit: I'm actually far more impressed visually by Hardware tessellation, which is tech we have now.

As alluded to above, Mr Minecraft, Notch says It's a scam

Ahh voxels, how I remember you from Comanche... you know... last century.

Voxels have been around for a very long time, they have their benefits and their weaknesses just like polygons. There's nothing 'revolutionary' about them.

So, yeah. Nice little demo they have there, but that's about it.

Creating detail is not the problem here. The video is incredibly flawed by not measuring the hardware requirements and development work needed. Yes your procedural created voxel world looks great..ish, but is unable to run in real time on available hardware cause all of our current hardware is polygon based. Also realtime scenes in games are considered low resolution. Step up to cinema quality scene and effects production and you cant tell the difference between polygons and voxels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel explains what this is and a list of (most) games that use voxel technology.

>> ^braindonut:

I sincerely hope it's not a load of crap.>> ^EvilDeathBee:
lol, what a load of crap



Apparently all the guy behind it is willing to let on as to the tech is "millions of atoms" and various other lines which we know to mean simply Voxels. He simply isn't willing to explain any further. I dunno if it's just a bit suss or that he's paranoid someone will rip it off.

The first thing I personally notice is the fact the world generated is completely static. How the fuck do you rig and animate a voxel character that complex? How do you get dynamic world motion in there like wind blowing grasses, trees, leaves, etc. The computation require to animate the world dynamically would be staggering. And then what about materials? How are materials created that isn't just colour if they're not just textures applied to polys but each individual voxel? What about collision?

Then the $50 million dollar question, is that how much it'll cost to simply develop a game for something like this? Game development costs are utterly absurd at the moment, with so many companies going under and only the big publishers left. The industry is ready to collapse and the last thing we need is something requiring that much more effort, time and money into creating. Which is why I desperately hope MS and Sony hold off releasing their new consoles for a while.

/end rant

Ha, it's actually Voxel-based:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/unlimited-detail-3-d-graphics/

Voxel are nice in theory, but you can't really hardware accelerate it.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Mine kids ask me every night: "any new MineCraft videos, Dad?" Maybe it's generational. I can imagine it would be really boring for a person who doesn't play it - but people who do play it, like seeing the ideas that others have come up with, and feeding off of them to inspire their own projects.

There are two purposes to the game:

1. Build Cool Stuff

2. Stay alive during the night.

But really, you can't explain MineCraft. You have to play it, get through you first night without dieing - and then you're sucked in, crappy voxel graphics be damned.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

You guys don't get it. The play's the thing.>> ^shuac:

>> ^NaMeCaF:
Voxel graphics are just so ugly

Agreed. If you're going through all the effort of making a World-Maker, then one might assume, in this time of facade-as-king, that effort was expended on making it look a little less like ass? Apparently not.