PhysX has struggled, most probably because Microsoft hasn't adopted it - and thus developers are struggling to justify bringing it on board. Are you in a similar position - do you need Microsoft to adopt this technology to make it work?
Interesting question. We certainly wouldn't be against a little help from Microsoft, but we are also working with Sony on the PS3. I'd say that PhysX made a very interesting move by providing Novodex for free but is struggling with its card.
We want to stay in the middleware for now, so we won't put effort and money on hardware. The problem for PhysX is fighting against an established base of other physics engines such as Havok. We, on the other hand, are starting to conquer an empty land. In some ways our position is similar but in many others it is different.
So as well as developers, do you hope to work with hardware manufacturers like Nvidia, Intel or ATI?
We're very close to some of these people and I'd love to see some of our instructions hard-coded into graphics chips. That would help a lot.
What is the likelihood of that?
We have to become the standard in the procedural texture middleware land first. It's early days yet, but I'm very confident what we are doing will be a success. Imagine having our technology in mobile phones: download a few kilobytes then generate a whole, top-quality game on your handset. This is the same for a whole host of devices; we could even do something similar with digital television. This could lead to great looking games on every platform.
How will this all impact the bit-tech reader?
Well, if we think of games distribution, your readers will be able to download their games, add-ons or updates faster. Waiting a long time to download all the extras is pretty annoying. They will also wait less time at the launch of the game, as it is mainly faster to compute textures at load-time with ProFX.
Most interestingly though, this technology would let gamers customise almost every texture of their game. The mod communities will love this, as the enthusiastic tweakers will love that procedural textures are computed on-the-fly, so you can tweak them easily.
They will be also be able to play 'Living' Games. What are living games? It is the same concept that Ken Kutaragi recently called "4D" games. I'm talking about games that 'evolve'. Watch the demo (.mov link) of the bathroom getting old. All that will be possible thanks to procedural content creation.
In terms of how these textures are 'living' do they contain all the data to age within the texture, or does an external computation have to occur to make them age?
It's all computation so you don't need to store all the intermediates nor the shapes of the impact all that is computed. So you can imagine a car hitting a wall, the car has a certain colour, shape, weight, speed. The physics engine then computes the impact vector field on the wall this vector field can be used to modify the textures in its inner properties and modify the normal map, the colour map, etc. according to all these parameters. Nothing has to be stored in the memory, it is all computed.
Ultimately will this equal, cheaper games? More detailed games? Games hitting release dates?
I'd say: all of that, in the sense that some developers will choose to get a cheaper game indeed but others will choose to fill the gained empty space with some other data and sell it at the same price. Procedural Textures help people design bigger worlds in the sense that if you want to create 100 times more content, you won't need to hire 100 times more people. Procedural Textures is simply a more efficient technique.
As Wil said in a recent column, new technologies are what drive this industry forward and as such I feel obliged to support procedural texturing. It is certainly innovative and will help speed up the process of digital distribution. Programmes like Steam and EA's Link service would be far better if you were able to get the games in a more timely manner. The question for procedural texturing and Allegorithmic is whether the technology will be picked up by the main games developers. We'll just have to wait and see.
Interesting question. We certainly wouldn't be against a little help from Microsoft, but we are also working with Sony on the PS3. I'd say that PhysX made a very interesting move by providing Novodex for free but is struggling with its card.
We want to stay in the middleware for now, so we won't put effort and money on hardware. The problem for PhysX is fighting against an established base of other physics engines such as Havok. We, on the other hand, are starting to conquer an empty land. In some ways our position is similar but in many others it is different.
So as well as developers, do you hope to work with hardware manufacturers like Nvidia, Intel or ATI?
We're very close to some of these people and I'd love to see some of our instructions hard-coded into graphics chips. That would help a lot.
What is the likelihood of that?
We have to become the standard in the procedural texture middleware land first. It's early days yet, but I'm very confident what we are doing will be a success. Imagine having our technology in mobile phones: download a few kilobytes then generate a whole, top-quality game on your handset. This is the same for a whole host of devices; we could even do something similar with digital television. This could lead to great looking games on every platform.
The wooden textures are at least of an equal standard to games like Half Life 2, even though they are far smaller in file size
How will this all impact the bit-tech reader?
Well, if we think of games distribution, your readers will be able to download their games, add-ons or updates faster. Waiting a long time to download all the extras is pretty annoying. They will also wait less time at the launch of the game, as it is mainly faster to compute textures at load-time with ProFX.
Most interestingly though, this technology would let gamers customise almost every texture of their game. The mod communities will love this, as the enthusiastic tweakers will love that procedural textures are computed on-the-fly, so you can tweak them easily.
They will be also be able to play 'Living' Games. What are living games? It is the same concept that Ken Kutaragi recently called "4D" games. I'm talking about games that 'evolve'. Watch the demo (.mov link) of the bathroom getting old. All that will be possible thanks to procedural content creation.
In terms of how these textures are 'living' do they contain all the data to age within the texture, or does an external computation have to occur to make them age?
It's all computation so you don't need to store all the intermediates nor the shapes of the impact all that is computed. So you can imagine a car hitting a wall, the car has a certain colour, shape, weight, speed. The physics engine then computes the impact vector field on the wall this vector field can be used to modify the textures in its inner properties and modify the normal map, the colour map, etc. according to all these parameters. Nothing has to be stored in the memory, it is all computed.
Ultimately will this equal, cheaper games? More detailed games? Games hitting release dates?
I'd say: all of that, in the sense that some developers will choose to get a cheaper game indeed but others will choose to fill the gained empty space with some other data and sell it at the same price. Procedural Textures help people design bigger worlds in the sense that if you want to create 100 times more content, you won't need to hire 100 times more people. Procedural Textures is simply a more efficient technique.
Visuals this good - on your mobile phone? It's a possibility in the near future.
Conclusion
So there you have it - hopefully that answers some of the questions regarding procedural textures. Whether or not this system will be used by games developers over the coming years remains to be seen but if you fancy experiencing this first hand then why not try downloading Roboblitz through Steam. Take a look at the Unreal Engine 3.0 when you download the game too, and kill two birds with one stone.As Wil said in a recent column, new technologies are what drive this industry forward and as such I feel obliged to support procedural texturing. It is certainly innovative and will help speed up the process of digital distribution. Programmes like Steam and EA's Link service would be far better if you were able to get the games in a more timely manner. The question for procedural texturing and Allegorithmic is whether the technology will be picked up by the main games developers. We'll just have to wait and see.
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