I think the biggest problem that people aren't talking about is that LOD for geometry simply isn't as important as texture quality when getting close to a surface. I'm pretty sure the reason they have so many duplicate objects in the original presentation is because they simply ran out of memory to store all the texture data for the scene, because you need really high rez textures to be able to zoom in so close to each object.
Notice that most demos which zoom in on the model don't use textures http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpEpAFGplnI, because they don't have textures with high enough resolution.
The implication in the video is the are no texture maps. The geometry (I agree with those who've said voxels) contain the texture information in three dimensions. That's why zooming on the palm tree actually looks good, unlike traditional polygon/texture map rendering.
That's good to know, am I still correct in assuming this still comes down to a memory tradeoff, whether you want large textures+polygons, or voxel data to represent a high detail model?
Absolutely. Information needs to be stored somewhere, whether in the voxels or the polygons/textures. I do wonder if these guys are doing something like levels of detail to allow the close-up detail without destroying performance at the macro level.
Comments
I think the biggest problem that people aren't talking about is that LOD for geometry simply isn't as important as texture quality when getting close to a surface. I'm pretty sure the reason they have so many duplicate objects in the original presentation is because they simply ran out of memory to store all the texture data for the scene, because you need really high rez textures to be able to zoom in so close to each object.
Notice that most demos which zoom in on the model don't use textures http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpEpAFGplnI, because they don't have textures with high enough resolution.
The implication in the video is the are no texture maps. The geometry (I agree with those who've said voxels) contain the texture information in three dimensions. That's why zooming on the palm tree actually looks good, unlike traditional polygon/texture map rendering.
That's good to know, am I still correct in assuming this still comes down to a memory tradeoff, whether you want large textures+polygons, or voxel data to represent a high detail model?
Absolutely. Information needs to be stored somewhere, whether in the voxels or the polygons/textures. I do wonder if these guys are doing something like levels of detail to allow the close-up detail without destroying performance at the macro level.