Plus, when it comes to the fine details of graphics engines I'll go with Carmack over Notch; if he's really planning on the next idtech engine to be voxel based there has to be something there that Notch doesn't understand.
Notch's math example assumes an atom in every space where there can be an atom, with the according memory requirements for those atoms. In reality there'll be a whole lot of empty space; but it's still a massive chunk of atoms.
(Caveat: I know shit about memory allocation for octrees.)
I can't imagine there won't be various "tricks" with voxels like there are for polys that allow replication of data without total replication of the processing required to display. That much seemed obvious from the get-go. I get the basis of what Notch is saying, but his game specifically is fundamentally different in how "solid" the world is, than any other game. For his purposes, yeah, voxels really might not be ideal; at least for a while before people figure out tricks and stuff like they have with polys; but it doesn't mean that the idea is somehow fundamentally flawed like he's saying.
That doesn't speak at all to the validity of the company at hand though. Just that the basic idea is at least somewhat sound and that better people are probably at work doing something real with it instead of just begging for cash.
Wouldn't it be possible to fit voxels to frames, and then animate those frames rather than the voxels themselves? If you make it so that each polygon in a traditional model has a voxel set instead of a texture, you could probably get an incredible level of detail.
Of course, that's still relying on polygons. I have no idea whatsoever about the rendering efficiency for any of this.
Posts
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Notch's math example assumes an atom in every space where there can be an atom, with the according memory requirements for those atoms. In reality there'll be a whole lot of empty space; but it's still a massive chunk of atoms.
(Caveat: I know shit about memory allocation for octrees.)
That doesn't speak at all to the validity of the company at hand though. Just that the basic idea is at least somewhat sound and that better people are probably at work doing something real with it instead of just begging for cash.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Of course, that's still relying on polygons. I have no idea whatsoever about the rendering efficiency for any of this.