On 6/8/2012 10:47 PM, Darren New wrote:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOvfn1p92_8
>
> Amazing the level of visual computation people are achieving these days
> in real time.

There is much more processing power under the hood of that machine than 
I have when I'm rendering, and there are clearly a number of tricks in 
play to replace long, expensive visual computations with down-and-dirty 
calculations that deliver acceptable results.  I doubt, for instance, 
that the glow and shadow effects in the smoke involved more than a few 
dozen particles at most.  The shadow cast by the smoke isn't something 
we can see with much clarity, so it just needs to move in a way that 
agrees with the motion of the smoke.  And so on.

The amount of pre-calculation going on here is probably much larger than 
the fellow in the video has let on; it is the ability to do *that* 
quickly that has made it possible for the editor to display the WYSIWYG 
results.

Those who remember editing .WAD files for DOOM may remember the step 
during saves where the BSP tree had to be calculated.  This took some 
time for larger maps.  Now that desktop machines run three hundred times 
faster, these intermediate calculations aren't as noticeable.

It looks like making a good story and good game play are going to be the 
remaining challenges going forward.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message