I would be interested to hear OTEE’s thoughts on this:
idTech 5 from the id Software web site: The ground breaking technology unveiled today will power id’s new internally developed game and will be available for licensing to third parties. The new id rendering technology practically eliminates the texture memory constraints typically placed on artists and designers and allows for the unique customization of the entire game world at the pixel level, delivering virtually unlimited visual fidelity. Combined with a powerful new suite of tools designed to specifically facilitate and accelerate this content creation process, id Tech 5™ will power games that contain vast outdoor landscapes that are completely unique to the horizon, yet have indoor environments with unprecedented artistic detail.
Streaming is definately something we are working on, but unfortunately the idea of 20 gigabytes of textures just doesn’t fly over the web even with perfect streaming of data.
True, but I could definitely see 1-2GB of textures being streamed during an extended online play. Especially as 10+ megabit broadband access increases. So maybe unlimited textures is overboard but several gigs is not. On the other hand I can’t imagine actually needing 20GB of textures unless the map is HUGE. As well game developers must consider the number of hours required to create such a vast number of unique textures. For anyone who licenses the id engine hiring 20+ artists may not be a big deal, but for small companies or open source projects, that is probably out of the question.
As i said, streaming of assets made real easy is definately interesting to us. Encouraraging people to create huge assets by uniquely painting each part of the world is not.
No online game streams the content like that. They all have a core client package that gets cached then you use the cached information for the game and only the game data packets go back and forth, not graphics. Streaming of the next level is good, not streaming the next tree.
You know … it’s really cool for demos and it certainly makes artists’ lives potentially easier, but it’s not that breathtakingly complex – all they need to do is localize textures based on position and have some kind of LOD support.
What it really sounds like is another way to make developing games more expensive :-/
All the high-res textures and super high polygon counts haven’t made XBox 360 or PS3 games interesting to play, but a few simple, innovative controller ideas with two generation old graphics have made the Wii pretty compelling.
I do have to say - I’m almost completely uninterested in the webplayer. I’m interested in non-streaming, install on your computer games - so am I to understand that OTEE’s priority is small online games? That seems to be a silly objective to focus on limiting game size potential because of a possible method of ouput. :\ Shouldn’t Unity aim high and then have tools for optimizing for other methods of output and not the otherway around? Not that I think you need to buy id’s software - but conceptually I find your statement somewhat alarming.
Our focus for the time being is on an engine that works both on and offline.
We dont mind if people make huge games in Unity that will never fit in the web player, Unity is very good for that too and we will keep on adding features that make this better. But at the moment our focus is on extending Unity in ways that benefit both on and offline publishing.
Also this tech just doesn’t seem very useful for most developers. The idea is creating unique content everywhere, but as has been pointed out, that also means that you actually have to spend the time to create that content. There is a lot to be said about reuse of assets.
As far as i’ve understood it the good thing is that you also don’t have to worry about how to setup your terrain (using texture x for this height, texture y for another height, spaltting image here and so on). Instead you just draw, so this is really nice from a artists point ofo view and i suspect you get a more unique look very quickly done and decrease production times.
I just wonder if the sizes they say are non compressed as otherwise i wonder how this should be distributed. Generally i wouldn’t bash it before seeing it in real action as normally Carmack knows what he’s doing and contrary to Epic their Engines are rock solid and even will run on OSX! ;O)
This sounds more like a console technology, like one that uses BlueRay or HDDVD discs. It’s cool, but I would never want to have to fill that amount of space with textures that add into the 20 gig arena.
Hmm… some of you are acting like eventually ALL games and 3D tech won’t go this way. You must see that it will, though, if you think about it.
Artists will probably have to rely on larger photos and found work rather than creating everything from scratch, but just like we moved on from every 5 feet of wall looking identical in games like Wolfenstein 3D, we will quickly move to less and less repeating geometry and textures.
Hard drives and storage media aren’t getting smaller and more expensive per GB, either.
Besides, the idea here is to let the artists simply add a touch here and there where it is important.
I also wonder if the 20GB figure is uncompressed to make it sound bigger.
Hmm i dislike this photorealistic real stuff but it’s also helpful if you just can increase the resolution of the texture in order to allow smoother comic style like textures. As for the compression, i suspect it’s either totally uncompressed or something like a dxtc, so that there is still room for further compression for an archive for example. Hmm if it’s uncompressed 20GBs would allow you to calculator use 320 texture in a size of 4kx4k with 32bit. Not this bad. Only problem would be for me that this exceeds the disk capacity of my mini already… :O)
Right, I’m only using the suggestion of found photos and stuff for games that are trying to achieve “realism.” I think the more fluid “cartoon” or other artistic styles have even more to benefit from this technique. Rather than being all rigid patterns, one giant swoop of the “brush” can suggest a bunch of information and it can span a huge area without repetition or lack of sharpness. Plus, it’ll probably compress well.
I can’t speak for otee, but I’m pretty sure he just meant that this tech doesn’t really fit well with foreseeable plans.
I think it’s pretty obvious that Wii support is a huge priority, web functionality is a huge growth opportunity, and Unity’s sheer power, which is best displayed in standalone games, is the linchpin that holds it all together.
Nothing that was said suggested otherwise to me. I think people are just reading into the statements far too deeply and being a bit paranoid.
I had assumed that this was one of the major points going for Unity with their Wii capabilities.
I’m not certain in the short term that without a major time and team commitment that any one here (despite there being some immensely talented folks whom I simply stare agog at) could produce a Wii game sold at your local electronics retailer amongst things like Zelda Twilight Princess and the like. Especially given the complex contractual negotiations and funding that requires.
But I’m absolutely certain that many of the top talents here could break into the online Wii game market and have their games featured for online downloading and/or play. Absolutely. And that would be such a major accomplishment for that team. Wow. Immediate worldwide exposure.
I think Unity is headed in the right direction. Oh yeah. I think we’re all in for a real treat 2-5 years from now and looking back at what’s been accomplshed.
