I work at a game development studio, so you can imagine there was quite a bit of debate and doubt about this video and the technology. At the very least, what you have here is what seems to be a relatively efficient point cloud viewer.

I mean, I don't think anybody would ever think that a point cloud based technology would ever replace the gaming technology that has developed, it's more a case of technological amalgamation.

I think its obvious that you would never use the point cloud as a raw source for your collision data etc. I ultimately envision this kind of point cloud technology being used as a visual proxy, whose collision will still be defined by a low res polygon mesh. I think its application would ultimately be restricted to static and non deforming objects within a game, but this would require some kind of mixed rendering pipeline, and the technicalities of that are well beyond my area of expertise so I don't know if that would even be possible.

I agree that selling this technology as some kind of holistic game development solution is total snake oil, but I still think that there could be some exciting potential use of point clouds in gaming tech in the future.

29.

It's actually pointless to introduce the solar energy input into the equation at all Crake. The sun has shone and will shine for far longer than human beings will ever manage to survive on this planet. When I and many others look at agricultural reform we look at those aspects of the food production chain that humans can control and can change. The 'facilitation' you talk about is the entire crux of the modern day agricultural dilemma. There are an infinite number of ways that facilitation could happen, and the concern and debate is whether or not the road industry has chosen for us is the one that will bare the most fruit. Clearly it has not. The reasons, myriad, I don't want to write a thesis on the sift.

And I agree, when you start looking at government crop subsidies the energy calculation does lose its relevance. Why? Because you have jumped a 100 steps up a chain that was problematic at its root. The agricultural subsidy issue is a whole other Pandora's box.

Again, it's not the Haber process itself that is unsustainable, it is the entire industrial agricultural framework. The Haber process's dependence on natural gas is problematic, and even with future technological developments aside, it's a reductionist solution that undermines the multitude of complimentary farming techniques that could naturally introduce nitrogen into the soil. It's the kind of simplified agricultural solution that corporate agribusiness monopolies love, and it's this mutual reinforcement that causes concern. Again, the Haber process is a small piece of huge puzzle, we digress.

And with regards to future developments, let me illustrate why future developments are almost irrelevant to many of the problems at hand. In India for example there is a 500 year old tradition of aquaculture, for shrimp specifically. Most of the farms are small, local and sustainably run using various aquaculture farming methods (if you are interested you could read up on the Bheri system of aquaculture, just one of the many traditional systems).

This 'third world' farming technique as some might call it is just as profitable and has yields just as large as the more intensive commercial and industrial aquaculture methods. It has stood the test of time and it also forms the back bone of India's shrimp export economy, the largest in the world.

Industrial shrimp farming has had dismal success around the world. Taiwan, China, Mexico, Ecuador, all these countries have had huge issues keeping commercial shrimp farming sustainable. Wherever commercial shrimp farming has been tried, it has failed to a large degree, usually due to major disease outbreaks. That's why the call it the 'rape and run' industry.

Isn't it strange that the more industrial shrimp farms are introduced in India (due to government subsidies and incentives), the more 'environmental issues' they have to deal with that just didn't exist with the 'traditional third world systems' . . . mangrove destruction, drinking water pollution (from antibiotics and pesticides add to the shrimp ponds to minimize disease) , salinization of groundwater, etc.

Now you might argue with me that the solution to this problem potentially lies with future developments . . . a better antibiotic maybe, perhaps genetically engineering shrimp to be more resistant to disease and pollution, etc, or maybe the solution lies in adopting farming techniques that have been slowly perfected for the last 500 years and are proven to work, where the only interventions that could be made were natural ones and success was determined by how well you could maintain a balanced relationship with your local ecosystem. It is these farming systems and the mindset that they embody that I would like to see the world adopt, improve upon and gravitate towards.

Pinning your hopes for improvement on future developments and technology is totally misguided, especially when the core of the modern industrial agricultural foundation is so rotten. I have nothing against technology, but I'm not going to let the problems, born of brutish and unsophisticated industrial thinking, be overlooked by a corporate apologist futurist mindset. I'm not implying that's how you feel about the issue, but that the stance that many people have. There is an utter lack of holistic thinking in the industrial agricultural world (and everywhere else pretty much) and the direction it is leading us in is potentially frightening.

He's not talking about the Haber process only, he's also talking about herbicide usage of products like Monsanto's RoundUp and others. This also ties into soil fertility and top soil depletion, it's not just a case of some arbitrary soil input method, there are many many many other contributing factors.

The Haber process may feed one third of the worlds population today, but it's not a sustainable practice, not the way agribusiness has wastefully adopted it and 'augmented' it with imazapyr and glyphosphate based herbicide products. It's not a common sense choice at all.

You have to look at how fossil fuel dependent modern industrial agricultural production is overall. 7-10 calories of energy input for 1 calorie of output? Retarded.

Small, inefficient 3rd world style farming? I was thinking something more along the lines of small to medium scale, efficient and sustainable farming practices where your energy input is smaller than your energy output.

Also, it's ironic to imply that 'third world' farming techniques are inefficient when many competent farmers throughout India and Africa, and I'm sure elsewhere, have taken huge yield hits after adopting 'modern, first world, farming techniques'.

I've used Speedtree before. It's dead simple really, you pick your tree type, tweak colour values, randomise trunk and branch patterns and finally generate the tree with the desired polygon count and voila. It's hardly any work at all to generate scenes like he did in this film.

There is another video on his Vimeo channel showing how he created one of the scenes in this film, all the way from modeling through to final comping. It's very interesting to see his work flow.

Here it is.

If you look at the compositing breakdown here you'll see that all the tree stuff has been done in 3d. I'm guessing that he used Speedtree.

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Hey fission

I put up a new climbing video, thought you'd like to check it out, it's a good one.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Chris-Sharma-Climbs-Pachamama-A-Brutal-Hard-Route-in-Spain

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He's not a nazi, he's not a socialist, he's not a Kenyan citizen and in my mind he's not a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize either, let alone a Peace Prize winner.

It's not like controversy is a new thing for the "Peace Prize", but how cheap and hollow do they really want to make this award? This is pure delusion.

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