bit-tech.net— A French company has designed a tool which will allow games developers to design textures that are 70% smaller in file size. Shocked? I couldn't believe it either... until I read this.
Oct 4, 2006View in Crawl 4
Smaller on my hard drive, quicker to install from DVD... I was thinking this would be perfect for next-gen consoles but then again, I imagine all the extra capacity of Blu-ray is for video files. Then again, smaller textures on the disc would presumably use less VRAM, which is ALWAYS a good thing in a console (as any PS2 owner can attest)
Some procedural methods can be used at runtime with good results. The best ones don't recreate the expanded texture every frame, but cache the parts you need. The advantage is you can get near infinite detail when you zoom in. But it does cost CPU/GPU no matter what you do. Second Life, btw, uses procedural 3D objects, which are expanded on the CPU.As for encoding traditional textures as procedural ones, there's a form of compression called fractal compression which does just that. It's essentially a front-loaded search (sometimes GA) for bits of algorithm that produce something like the input art. It's lossy, of course. And it's very slow to encode. But decompression is fairly fast. I didn't see any mention of anything like that on the company site.
@EliteThose are pretty cool, but I think they just substantiate the point everyone is trying to make about compression vs. CPU usage. I ran the second last one (the one with this comment "3 years old, and probably the most info in 64KB I've ever seen!!") and it brought my CPU to it's knees while still running choppy (specs are X2 4800 and 3g of ram).
um, its not truely a full compression. its what could be called a 'lossless compression' since the actual image is made up of math (like compression does with files) rather than just lines of information.yes, it would use less Vram, and less ram, it will probably make a 1gb of Vram all we will ever need for 10 years due to this technology.it is called Procedural Generation, take a look at Spore which is doing this as well for animaiton, textures, and worlds. we WONT need blu-ray or HD-DvD discs for games simply because of this technology. the advantage is also that extreme detail can also be added to games without any kind of loss. theoretically you can get as close to the texture as you want (ok its not a texture anymore) and it will still retain high-def quality.want proof?.kkrieger Project, google it, download it.its a 98kb game that has graphics that nearly equal DOOM3. and takes about 10-15 minnutes to finish. the largest filesize of our new games is now prerendered video, and audio clips. the team of .kkrieger talks about how everything could be much smaller if they took out audio completely.
the_popeOct 4, 2006
Smaller on my hard drive, quicker to install from DVD... I was thinking this would be perfect for next-gen consoles but then again, I imagine all the extra capacity of Blu-ray is for video files. Then again, smaller textures on the disc would presumably use less VRAM, which is ALWAYS a good thing in a console (as any PS2 owner can attest)
kingaceOct 4, 2006
Wasn't that on digg a while ago?
otherOct 4, 2006
'bout damn time! Games are getting into the 4GB region for the computer..
entropymanOct 4, 2006
Some procedural methods can be used at runtime with good results. The best ones don't recreate the expanded texture every frame, but cache the parts you need. The advantage is you can get near infinite detail when you zoom in. But it does cost CPU/GPU no matter what you do. Second Life, btw, uses procedural 3D objects, which are expanded on the CPU.As for encoding traditional textures as procedural ones, there's a form of compression called fractal compression which does just that. It's essentially a front-loaded search (sometimes GA) for bits of algorithm that produce something like the input art. It's lossy, of course. And it's very slow to encode. But decompression is fairly fast. I didn't see any mention of anything like that on the company site.
geokenOct 5, 2006
@EliteThose are pretty cool, but I think they just substantiate the point everyone is trying to make about compression vs. CPU usage. I ran the second last one (the one with this comment "3 years old, and probably the most info in 64KB I've ever seen!!") and it brought my CPU to it's knees while still running choppy (specs are X2 4800 and 3g of ram).
foxhoundadminOct 5, 2006
procedural generation, anyone? compression is not the issue here (at least not with the 360).take a look at .kkrieger.
thorlordOct 5, 2006
um, its not truely a full compression. its what could be called a 'lossless compression' since the actual image is made up of math (like compression does with files) rather than just lines of information.yes, it would use less Vram, and less ram, it will probably make a 1gb of Vram all we will ever need for 10 years due to this technology.it is called Procedural Generation, take a look at Spore which is doing this as well for animaiton, textures, and worlds. we WONT need blu-ray or HD-DvD discs for games simply because of this technology. the advantage is also that extreme detail can also be added to games without any kind of loss. theoretically you can get as close to the texture as you want (ok its not a texture anymore) and it will still retain high-def quality.want proof?.kkrieger Project, google it, download it.its a 98kb game that has graphics that nearly equal DOOM3. and takes about 10-15 minnutes to finish. the largest filesize of our new games is now prerendered video, and audio clips. the team of .kkrieger talks about how everything could be much smaller if they took out audio completely.
teamparadoxOct 5, 2006
Oblivion was about 6 gigs with no compression applied, and since its a 1st gen game it wasnt optimized either.Why the hell was I down mod'd?
ldavidOct 5, 2006
great so more games are gonna come out with better graphics and more people will be addicted to them...ow and more people will die because of it: <a class="user" href="http://www.ferrago.com/story/6133">http://www.ferrago.com/story/6133</a>wooohoooo!